


Eleanor Potter and the Train Station Called Purgatory

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus [18]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Attempted Murder, F/M, Family, Female Harry Potter, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Tragedy, Wrong Boy-Who-Lived (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: Ellie Potter was never the boy who lived, she just happened to be in the same room at the same time, and yet she can't help but grow and notice that it is never Harry Potter who must fight his own demons.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So a few obligatory notes. First, obviously, NOT CANON. Second, this is more of a... spin-off of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" so I wouldn't consider the mother fic required reading here.

The clatter of a basilisk’s fang falling to the floor.

 

The sharp, rasping sound, of breath in the dark and a heartbeat like a drum out of rhythm.

 

These things are closer to her, to her head, than her thoughts, her feelings, and even the sight of the pale young man smiling across at her.

 

“I must say I am impressed, it is no easy task to slay a basilisk. Still, there’s no cure for that poison, I’m afraid this is the end, Eleanor Potter.”

 

The sound of her breathing, the sound of her heartbeat, the clang as a sword dropped to the stone floor of the chamber of secrets. In the background a great leviathan laid dead and she stumbled forward towards the man.

 

“It’s just too bad you weren’t your brother.”

 

And Harry Potter was nowhere in sight.

 

* * *

 

Ellie Potter had known for a very long time that she had come out wrong.

 

It wasn’t a well-known fact, or one even discussed extensively as far as she could tell, but sometimes people were born just a little off. Her parents said it about the dark lord, people didn’t become monsters like that, you had to be born broken to do what he did. She was sure they said it about others too, no one she knew personally, but then she didn’t know too many people personally.

 

She was more than certain people said it about her; they just tried not to say it to her face.

 

Interestingly enough people did say it about Harry, which, when it came to Harry it just wasn’t true at all.

 

(A well-established but necessary fact: Eleanor Potter was not the girl who lived, she had just been there at the time, it was her twin brother who’d been shot in the head but managed to get out unscathed.)

 

Harry, as far as she could tell, was pretty well ordinary aside from the whole blowing up the dark lord and not dying thing. Well, he was magically talented, according to their parents and everyone else they met but nothing really out of the ordinary. Besides people expected Harry to be gifted, no they wanted him to be gifted, people were alarmed by a boy who lived who just acted like a boy.

 

They never acted like it, uncle Sirius and Remus always tried to treat Harry like ‘a real boy’, whatever that meant. They’d have him play quidditch with them for hours or do other normal boy activities, but all the same they’d always get a little distressed when Harry took to these normal activities a little too well. It was like they all wanted to say, “Try to put a little effort into it, Harry, you’re acting like you’re not a prophesized warrior.”

 

People were weird about Harry in general; they always had been.

 

But this wasn’t about Harry, this was about her, and that made all the difference really.

 

The first time she remembered really thinking that something was wrong, that maybe something really was off about her, that she should have been more like Harry and less like Ellie, was when she was very young.

 

She’d started talking a lot sooner than Harry did, reading too, and even accidental magic. At first her parents had been proud but then, well they’d never stopped saying that they were proud, but their eyes had dimmed slightly with each new parlor trick she’d devised.

 

One day, when they’d told her to go play with Harry in a room for a little bit while they did grown up things, she’d tapped the floo and decided to listen in on whatever it was they didn’t want her hearing.

 

It turned out they’d called over Albus Dumbledore into the living room.

 

“Thanks for coming, Albus.” Her mother said accompanied by the light clink of a tea tray.

 

(In the room she was in she watched with distant eyes as Harry toddled and played with various floating toys, reaching out for the colorful bubbles and laughing with delight as they danced away from him.)

 

“Thank you for having me, Lily, James, you would not believe how little time I have to drink tea with old friends.” There was a smile in the man’s voice, a grandfatherly type voice, and then rustling as all parties settled themselves into chairs.

 

Too long of a silence and then a sigh from the old man, “I see that this is not purely a social call, then.”

 

“You said to talk to you if there was every anything…”

 

“Is it Harry?” The man interrupted before her father could finish all signs of geniality gone and replaced by something that was almost alarm.

 

“No, no, it’s not Harry. Harry’s fine, it’s… Well, it’s Ellie.”

 

(“Ellie?” She looked to over to see Harry who was looking at her with a concerned expression, he said it at the same time as the old man, before she could respond though her father was answering.)

 

“Yeah, she’s… Well, I mean it’s good that she’s doing magic this early, and talking, and writing… Isn’t it? I mean, you said to tell you if anything…”

 

“No, no, you were good to tell me, James, Lily.” Albus Dumbledore quickly reassured them.

 

(“Ellie?” Harry prompted again.

 

“Quiet, Harry, I’ll play in a minute.”)

 

“Tell me, it’s been a while since I’ve seen little Eleanor, what is she like?”

 

“Like?” Her mother asked, questioning, “Well, she’s… She’s a very smart girl…”

 

“Like her mother!”

 

“Stop it, James. No, she’s smarter than I was, you too James. She’s also, well, a little different. Of course there’s nothing wrong with being a little different, and she’s very sweet, she’s always looking after Harry…”

 

“But you did call me here.” The man pointed out.

 

“Yes… Yes we did, it’s just… Well, see what you think.”

 

(“Ellie? You okay?”

 

“Yeah, sorry, just listening to some things I probably shouldn’t be.”)

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t that her father, her mother, uncle Sirius, uncle Remus, or anyone else didn’t love her. That was an important thing to note, something she told herself often. She wasn’t entirely sure what love was, really, but they knew better than her and they meant it when they said they loved her. They believed that they loved her. And love was pretty important, Dumbledore said it was love that had let Harry live with a wand pointed to his head, so it was a good thing to have.

 

So it wasn’t that they didn’t love her.

 

Even when Dumbledore started showing up more and more often, asking her what she could do with magic and what she couldn’t, it wasn’t like any affection had dimmed in their eyes. It was just, well… They always had an easier time looking at Harry.

 

“I wish I was good at magic like you are, Ellie.”

 

This was a few years before they had gone to Hogwarts and by now it was almost taken for granted that she was very good at using wandless magic. At first they had tried to convince her not to use it, saying that was the whole point of having the wand, so that you only did real magic when you were ready. But that never really made sense to her, you didn’t need a wand after all, she certainly didn’t and as far as she could tell she could do pretty much everything her parents could and maybe more.

 

(Not that they knew that, they’d been alarmed by floating objects and balls of fire, she didn’t know what they’d do if they’d see wandless transfiguration or ward manipulation.)

 

When that hadn’t worked they’d sort of given up stating that they’d be coming down hard when she got her wand and the laws came into effect. So by the time they were eight it was pretty commonplace to see Ellie’s supposedly accidental magic in effect.

 

She and Harry were outside in the yard, her reading a book, and Harry chasing a snitch on the latest broom he had just gotten for their birthday. He’d gotten down to talk to her though, sat right next to her on the grass.

 

“I’m too good at magic.” She qualified, which was true enough, her parents had said as much to Dumbledore and certainly the old man seemed to think so as well.

 

“No, you’re… I’m the boy who lived right?” He asked, but it was more of a rhetorical question than anything else, “So I should be good at magic.”

 

It was then, staring at her twin brother, that the idea first popped into her head. In person Harry was fairly unassuming, he shared her green eyes, the color of the killing curse as they were told, but he was small and he wore glasses. He looked, for all intents and purposes, just like any other boy.

 

She looked fairly normal herself, at a distance, but even she had the small lightning bolt on her forehead from the ricocheting killing curse that had hit Harry.

 

She’d wondered why it took her so long to think it, maybe because everyone took it so seriously, as if there was no possible room to question it.

 

Harry was the boy who lived, it was that simple, but then, who had been there at the time?

 

“Harry, what if you’re not… What if you’re not the boy who lived?” She asked hesitantly, he didn’t say anything but she pressed forward regardless, “What if that’s not really what happened that night? I mean, we don’t really know, we just know that the house was blown up and we were somehow both alive and the dark lord dead. I mean, what if it just seems true because everyone says it all the time?”

 

“What do you mean? I’m the boy who lived, Ellie.” Harry said blinking his eyes growing wide and something like fear entering his expression.

 

“Oh sure, everyone says that, but that doesn’t mean anything. I think they just want you to be the boy who lived, the good explanation for that night, better to have a boy savior than to just have dark lords exploding for no good reason.”

 

“But…” Harry started again looking stricken and she continued for him.

 

“But what if you’re not? For all we know I could be the boy who lived…”

 

He cut her off, “I am the boy who lived, Ellie!”

 

He grabbed his broom and stalked away leaving her blinking and staring at his retreating figure and she had no idea what she’d said.

 

Even later, years later, she still couldn’t quite figure it out.

 

Harry hated being the boy who lived, he hated the pressure, from their parents and everyone else, the need to live up to their expectations. Harry was always saying to her and later to his friends how he just wanted to be Harry Potter; someone normal. But when she had even suggested for a moment that maybe he really wasn’t, that maybe there had never been a boy who lived, he hadn’t talked to her afterwards for days.

 

She was always doing things like that. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. It was like she was living in some fading illusion, where reality and the spell were warped together so that parts bled in and out, and the rules for each different reality were… well, contradictory.

 

You were supposed to be good at magic, but not too good, people never survived the killing curse, until they did, and the war was over, except when it wasn’t.

 

She never seemed to be able to get it straight, or when she did, it turned out that it was the wrong thing after all.

 

Like telling Harry that maybe he really wasn’t the boy who lived.

 

“I really don’t get it after all.” She’d said with a sigh but as was typical of moments where you were alone in the backyard, no one answered back.

 

* * *

 

So it wasn’t like she didn’t know that Eleanor Potter was just a little bit too weird and too magical and too other things to boot; she knew, she just couldn’t fix it.

 

She and Harry grew apart later.

 

In retrospect it was kind of inevitable, or rather, she had seen it coming long before they even got to Hogwarts.

 

She and Harry had been pretty sheltered growing up thanks to Harry’s ridiculous celebrity status and whatever it was Dumbledore wanted with their family. Harry was important, not only because he made dark lords flammable, but also for some other unknown secret reason. Harry hadn’t caught on yet but Dumbledore visited them a little too often for friendly chats and was always a little too interested in Harry’s, and then her own, magical development.

 

So for a while, before Hogwarts, Harry didn’t really have too many options for friends. There was her, the Weasleys, and that was about it.

 

When the hat placed her in Slytherin and Harry in Gryffindor that was really the death knell for them.

 

Harry didn’t really mean it, she thought, even as he played quidditch and made Gryffindor friends and tried to fish out Snape’s secrets. He didn’t mean it in the way that her parents didn’t mean to only kind of love her; he didn’t mean it, but what did people’s intentions ever get them?

 

The muggles said that the road to fiery torture pit was paved with good intentions.

 

So Harry made friends and Ellie didn’t and when you’re all alone in a castle the monsters come out to play.

 

Despite being the boy who lived, the unquestionable protagonist of the story, Harry never faced his demons.

 

Ellie did instead.

 

* * *

 

Ellie was not the main character in the play, she was a side character, a quirky thing who sometimes spouted interesting philosophy or else had an eloquent monologue. Important enough, in her relation to the protagonist Harry Potter, but on her own she could not carry the weight of the story.

 

She lacked destiny, prophecy, and the humanizing need to live up to the expectations of the audience.

 

And yet, it seemed that the play had other ideas, and drove itself in its own intended directions which were much further than the ones she would guess.

 

She had no intention of getting involved in the mysterious mystery that took place in their first year. Dumbledore announced a treasure guarded by demons in the basement but she had no interest in such materialistic things as that.

 

(The true irony was that Harry did have an interest in this, his role as the boy who lived almost begged him to take interest, not to steal the treasure but to protect it from scoundrels and fiends. He just looked in all the wrong directions.)

 

After realizing that she wasn’t going to make any friends, that Harry had essentially abandoned her for Ron Weasley and then later Hermione Granger, she’d just decided that it would be best to float her way through Hogwarts and wait til it was over.

 

She turned in her assignments, did her problems, and on the whole was the top student in their class (which apparently drove Hermione Granger up the wall but that was another fact for another day) but beyond that she didn’t interact much with the school.

 

She had no intentions of finding out Snape’s secrets, playing quidditch, and protecting the third floor corridor like Harry did.

 

Intentions were tricky things though; they usually didn’t get you what you wanted.

 

It was Quirrell who ended up taking an interest in her.

 

He gave her migraines, that was a thing to note, unbelievable and spontaneous headaches from his stutters and sheer incompetence. He was possibly worse than Binns, who was dead, and that said a lot about everything.

 

The moment he’d first had her in class though, when their eyes had met, it seemed as if something had passed through them and he seemed fake. Like he was wearing Quirrell as an enchanted cloak and that something else lay beneath it.

 

He asked her to have tea with him in his office regularly; for seemingly no reason and she went because she saw no reason to say no.

 

Sometimes he didn’t stutter and when he didn’t stutter he always had something interesting to say.

 

“You’re very different from your brother, Miss Potter.” He noted one day and she made some noise of agreement because it was true enough.

 

Harry was always weird about their shared classes, seeing her on the Slytherin side of the room with the likes of Draco Malfoy. He’d freeze up a little and turn his head as if to ignore the fact that she was even in the same room, like if he didn’t look at her then she wasn’t really in Slytherin.

 

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re more talented than he is?”

 

No one had said it in as many words, it was a bit taboo to claim she was more powerful than her savior brother, because of the two of them Harry really should have been the more powerful given everything. You just didn’t say things like that or even believe it, her parents were always encouraging Harry to show his true potential, saying that if Ellie could do it easily then he could too. It never seemed to cross their minds that maybe Ellie was just better than he was.

 

“No, that’s not really something you just say, professor.” She said before taking a sip of her tea wondering just what point Quirrell was getting at with all this.

 

“True enough, but nonetheless it is an uncomfortable truth we must contend with. The boy who lived is not as powerful as his twin sister.”

 

“Is there a point to all this?” She interrupted with narrowed eyes, there always was a point with the non-stuttering Quirrell, and usually he got to it quickly enough as he didn’t have the stamina to talk normally for a long time but she was getting a little impatient with the personal observations.

 

“Patience, Miss Potter, I’m getting there. The reason this truth is uncomfortable is because it leads to seemingly conflicting facts, the young Harry Potter who is predicted to grow up to be one of the greatest wizards of his generation is less powerful than his sister, Harry Potter is the destroyer of the dark lord and his sister is not, and yet… It is this and yet that makes things interesting. Tell me, Miss Potter, what do you think these people make of you?” Ah, here was his point, his eyes glowed like dying coals and a satisfied smile was stretching itself across his face. The rest of the conversation was written for him, he just wanted to hear her say it.

 

“People don’t know what to make of me.”

 

“Wrong.” He said the word slowly so that it sounded out like the single peal of a bell in the office, “They avoid you, not because they don’t understand you, but because they are afraid of you. You don’t fit into their idea of how the world works and so they fear what you represent; the fact that they have no idea how the dark lord died.”

 

“And you’re not afraid of that?” She asked peering over at him and his smile faded at the question sobriety working itself back into his features.

 

“Well, not quite in the same manner.”

 

Quirrell was very ill, possibly dying, and as the year progressed she watched his transformation into something else first hand and no one seemed to notice. It was as if they were all blind or else completely indifferent, Quirrell was less than a side character to them, he was an extra.

 

Harry, when she did run into him in the hallways or on the weekend, constantly went on about Snape and how their father had said Snape was a Death Eater, that he was an evil man who had done only one good thing in his life but could falter again.

 

Harry should have been chasing Quirrell, but he didn’t, and so Ellie was left to him instead.

 

And things spiraled out of control soon after that.

 

* * *

 

May of 1991.

 

A few essential facts before the scene commenced.

 

Eleanor Potter was in a different play than her brother and his companions and in a different genre as well. Harry Potter played the knight, Eleanor Potter’s role was not so easily defined.

 

Quirrell, a man whose papier-mâché face seemed to have everyone fooled, was dying of some terminal disease and was most likely after Dumbledore’s secret treasure.

 

Quirrell took unnecessary and unwarranted interest not in the boy who lived, whom he encountered a few times but left no lasting impression, but rather in his twin epithet-less sister.

 

Wizards did believe in demons, in horrors that could not be explained, they were the darkest of arts. Eleanor Potter had been raised with these images in her head and she couldn’t help but think that she did not understand Quirrell in the slightest.

 

Dumbledore was summoned to the ministry one day leaving the third floor corridor supposedly unguarded.

 

* * *

 

Harry would make it almost all of the way through the obstacles with his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Ron won the chess game but at the cost of his own piece, the blow had not been a kind one, and so Harry and Hermione Granger had stayed behind to drag him back to the entrance and then to the hospital wing.

 

So she and Harry didn’t cross paths that night because by that time she’d already been in the final chamber and Quirrell had been there too.

 

He turned from the mirror that cold smile decorating his face as he caught sight of her, “Ah, I wondered if you might show your face, Eleanor Potter.”

 

They made no move towards each other, she stood on the stair case covered in dirt and grime from the obstacles to get there, and him before the ornate and ominous looking mirror.

 

Without prompting from her he continued, “Forgive me, but I’m afraid this is one of the few times that I actually hoped to see your brother in your stead.”

 

“I guess you’ll have to settle.” She replied coolly and took a step at a time.

 

She was afraid but everything seemed tilted more than afraid she felt cold, like there was some cold engine where her heart should have been, pushing her onward and making everything seem distant and yet sharp in the same instant.

 

He laughed at that, “Yes, I suppose I will. I’ve always liked you better than your brother though, so it all works out.”

 

She stopped once she was on the floor with him, the fires raging behind her, and again their eyes met and his seemed to dance in the reflected light.

 

“Who are you, really?” She asked.

 

“Oh I am disappointed, I thought it would be obvious.” He paused considering her momentarily and she supposed it was obvious, obvious enough that he didn’t need to come out and say it, after all perhaps even he feared to say his own name.

 

Somehow it didn’t matter that he had been blown up to bits the last time anyone had seen him, she just knew that it was him.

 

Lord Voldemort.

 

 “The real question is, Eleanor Potter, who are you?”

 

She paused at that the coldness breaking momentarily, “Who am I?”

 

“Yes, you see, I was there that night and I can safely tell you what you’ve already guessed. There is no boy who lived. When I made to slaughter you and your brother, having gotten your parents out of the way by that point, I aimed first not at the boy but at you.”

 

Something in her shattered in that moment, the dream or hope for normalcy, to fake it til she made it. It was one thing to think such things, to even acknowledge them and present them to Harry, it was another to know that they were real.

 

She was startled by his hand on her shoulder, somehow burning through the cloth, and he looked down at her, “And now, girl who lived, I’m afraid you must do something for me.”

 

He steered her unwilling legs towards the mirror, unconcerned by the wand in her shaking arms, or her weak protests.

 

“Look inside, little girl, and find me my philosopher’s stone.”

 

And then she looked.

 

And then she failed.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry would ask her what happened later, as would Dumbledore, and her parents but her brief acquaintanceship with the dark lord in the guise of Quirrell had taught her a few things.

 

Don’t bother telling things to people who aren’t going to listen.

 

Something told her that her failure to retrieve the stone from the mirror, and then her almost instinctual grabbing of the back of Quirrell’s head, digging her fingers into the misshapen facial features she found there, and burning them was something presumed to be in Harry’s realm of expertise rather than her own.

 

Indeed, Dumbledore had been surprised that it was her that had made it all the way to the end, and not her brother Harry. He spoke to her briefly, his mind wandering elsewhere, and had merely listened as she’d told him that Voldemort was almost back but not quite.

 

She didn’t bother telling him what he had told her, that Dumbledore had the wrong boy who lived and that everyone had been betting on the wrong quidditch team.

 

It consumed her over the summer, the thought of how much sense it really made, because when you thought about it she was more of a boy who lived than Harry. She was the one with the unbelievable amount of magic, the best in their class, who made everything seem so simple and easy and yet failed in the simplest of tasks like making friends or even understanding people.

 

She lacked certain aspects of humanity; that was necessary in things like boys who lived.

 

Voldemort’s humor was catching, because she thought that statement was absurdly funny.

 

* * *

 

 

“Ellie?”

 

It was almost the end of summer, their birthday had already passed, Harry had received a new broom model and she a stack of books. It was August and in the heavy heat the idea of Hogwarts loomed ever closer.

 

She was outside sitting beneath a tree and staring out into the red washed sky, waiting for the sun to set, and wondering how a sunset could look so different on any given day.

 

She looked over to see a concerned Harry staring down at her, fidgeting slightly, seeming uncomfortable. Probably guilty over not talking to her much during the school year, or something, one could never tell with Harry.

 

“Yes?” She asked when he didn’t say anything else and he almost flinched at the sound of her voice.

 

“Are you, are you alright, Ellie?” He asked then determination firing into his eyes, “I know we didn’t talk much last year and that I wasn’t there with you when I should have been but… You don’t seem alright.”

 

She considered his words, they were fair enough, and true enough as well. He was the one who was supposed to be in Dumbledore’s final room; but then maybe he wasn’t. He was the boy who lived but only to the general audience, maybe that room really had been meant for the boy who lived, the real boy who lived, or the next best thing which was her.

 

Voldemort hadn’t exactly been surprised to see her.

 

“I grabbed the back of a man’s head and lit him on fire.” Ellie summarized with a dull expression and she watched as Harry paled at the details, she hadn’t told the details before, “And it was mostly unnecessary, I think he would have let me walk away.”

 

Harry was silent at that for a few moments, blinking rapidly as he took in the details, even taking half a step back from her. He licked his dry lips before asking, “But… But he was the dark lord…”

 

“He thought I was interesting.”

 

And he had, he really had, and that moment when she’d turned to him failing to get the stone she’d really thought that maybe he’d let her go. But it had been instinctual and they’d both had their roles to play.

 

“Ellie… Ellie, he was not going to let you live. You had to do it, I know that, don’t ever think that you did something you weren’t forced to.” Harry said as if this justification excused all her actions against the man.

 

When it came to Voldemort you could do pretty much anything to him and get away with it even lighting him on fire with your bare hands.

 

“If you say so.”

 

He sat down next to her then and took her into his arms, and they sat there together staring out at the sunset, with so many empty words resting between them. She hoped it made him feel better about the whole thing.

 

* * *

 

 

The next year started a little differently in a few ways. One was that Harry was almost needlessly around. Where he had been entirely absent before he now took to hanging around too much or more frequently asking for her to hang around him and the gang.

 

It was alright, for the first week, but both Weasley and Granger tolerated her at best.

 

Hermione Granger was still a little upset that she was ranked second in their year to Ellie and something about how Ellie ignored Harry too much and didn’t respect his feelings, whatever that meant. She plastered on a polite expression though and tried to include Ellie in whatever it was they did on any given day, which was usually Hermione lecturing on the benefits of studying Potions. It was clear though that their forced friendship was failing fast and that unlike Harry with the near troll death experience she and Hermione didn’t have much to fall back on with common interests and experiences.

 

It was even worse with Ron Weasley. Ron had this weird obsession with her brother, sort of like he was a collector’s item, and that somehow by being Harry’s friend he was superior to his brothers and everyone else. Ron barely stood Hermione but had seemed to decided that Harry and Hermione were a package deal, he wasn’t about to stand Harry’s younger twin sister.

 

He was a little more vocal about his discontentment than Hermione.

 

“Harry, why did you have to invite your creepy sister along?” Ron would groan as they prepared to visit Hagrid.

 

“My sister isn’t creepy, you take that back!” Harry said before looking over at her apologetically.

 

“Oh it’s alright, most people do tend to think I’m creepy, I think it goes with the reputation of lighting people on fire.” Ellie said to which Ron didn’t give her a grateful look but did give her an odd one as if she wasn’t the one he wanted to jump to his defense.

 

“See what I mean, mate?” Ron whispered into Harry’s ear, still loud enough that she could hear it perfectly well.

 

She felt like she was in a little play made by Harry to reassure not only their parents, who had become increasingly worried about her wellbeing over the summer, but himself as well. It wasn’t so much for her own joy and happiness as it was for him to feel that he had done his duty as a brother, that he hadn’t abandoned her to his own enemies.

 

Which he had, sort of, depending on your point of view.

 

Ellie meanwhile felt as if she was being swallowed into a bottomless hole where everyone wanted you to grin all the time and pretend that things hadn’t gotten out of hand. Where you had to listen to the ramblings of Gilderoy Lockhart, have tea parties with your twin brothers and his side kicks, and pretend like you really went to a school instead of a façade for the things that lurked in the basement.

 

Like Quirrells.

 

So in a way it was almost a relief when the basement came to her, when it wrote on the walls in rooster’s blood.

 

But of course, in many ways it wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

Ellie had met Ginny Weasley, all of the Weasleys really, long before they had come to Hogwarts. Being another family in the Order of the Phoenix they were one of the few children that their parents trusted to be around Harry and Ellie without trying to manipulate them for power.

 

This turned out to be wrong, not so much for the older children, but definitely Ginny and Ron got weird about Harry.

 

Harry probably never realized the extent of the weirdness in either of them, they’d learned to hide it pretty quick, that and Harry was extraordinarily thick when it came to how others perceived him. Even he had admitted that the six year old Ginny Weasley’s extravagant marriage proposal had been a bit odd.

 

So Ellie hadn’t exactly been thrilled to meet Ginny in the dark hallway, in the middle of the night, when the walls were whispering for her to kill mudbloods.

 

“Oh, Ginny, hello…” Ellie started noting that Ginny looked a bit creepier than usual.

 

Ron said that Ellie was creepy but really his little sister had him beat, at least that night, the way her eyes seemed dull and dazed as if her body was just a puppet and the way the shadows danced on her face.

 

“If it isn’t, Ellie Potter, the sister of the boy who lived.” Ginny started sounding a bit more sophisticated than Ginny usually managed.

 

“Mmm, yep, that’s me, the sister, of that guy. It’s super fun, can we not bring that up?” Ellie asked and Ginny’s mouth twisted into something that would look like a grin if it wasn’t so jagged.

 

“Are you bitter?” Ginny asked stepping closer.

 

“Well, not about that, it’s a long story. Way too long for the middle of the night with the purist Slytherin monster roaming the halls.” Ellie pointed out which caused the red-headed little girl to pause and consider that statement. Her brow furrowed for a moment, perhaps caught on the fact that Slytherin’s monster had some pretty strong opinions for a monster, but she shook it off.

 

“True enough, I suppose, these are dangerous times.” Ginny said, “Of course, Harry Potter will save us all I’m sure.”

 

“Harry?” Ellie asked.

 

She supposed it was a reasonable enough belief, especially for Ginny, and Harry was trying. He and the gang were investigating again researching Slytherin’s monster in the library and things that could cause petrification. So far Harry had pinned the suspects down to Malfoy and Snape, both of which were terrible choices for various reasons, but Harry hadn’t listened to her when she’d tried to tell him. It kept him busy and out of trouble, at any rate, at least it kept him out of the important trouble.

 

Like the thing that whispered in the pipes.

 

Ellie, for her own part, had decided that this year would be different and she really wouldn’t get involved in any of it at all. She’d gone out of her way to avoid Gilderoy Lockhart as much as possible, he looked well and good but Quirrell had told her that there was a curse on the Defense position and as crazy as Quirrell ended up being he usually wasn’t wrong. She’d been a model student really, well except for the sneaking around the castle at night, but that was an entirely different story.

 

“Do you think he can’t do it?” Ginny’s voice cut into her thoughts the girl’s eyes narrowed.

 

“No, I mean, he is the boy who lived…” Sort of, kind of, except when he wasn’t, “Listen, Ginny, all this catching up is great but I’m leaving now. Bye.”

 

And with that she hightailed it out of there to the Slytherin common room leaving Ginny standing there with that terrifying smile in the hallway.

 

Since that day Ginny had decided that she was Ellie’s best friend ever.

 

She was everywhere, standing outside Ellie’s classes, following her into the library, one time Ellie had even found her in the dungeon bathrooms, and the more Ginny talked the weirder it all got.

 

It was like Ginny wasn’t even Ginny, there was no more talking about seducing Harry, about marrying him when they were old enough. Ginny barely talked about Harry, instead she philosophized about magic, the boy who lived, and Ellie’s own role in the universe.

 

“I’m glad you’re making friends.” Harry had said with a genuine smile one day, Ellie had joined up on some of his hang outs with his friends if only to stave off Ginny (if Ginny looked for Ellie she avoided Harry like the plague).

 

“Um, I don’t think Ginny’s a friend, she’s more like a terrifying stalker.” Ellie commented but Harry’s smile didn’t dim.

 

“No, really, I was worried about you last year, and even this year too. You don’t like Hermione and Ron much, do you?”

 

“That’s irrelevant.” Ellie said, because really, it had nothing to do with Ginny’s stalking.

 

“Still, I’m glad, Ellie.” He said patting her on the shoulder briefly, that warm smile on his face, before turning his attention to Ron and Hermione who were bickering at a nearby table about something pointless.

 

It was her one reassurance, that Ginny’s constant presence made Harry happy, the one benefit of the situation. Because otherwise it was starting to remind her a little too much of Quirrell and the year before for comfort.

 

She and Quirrell had gotten on very well, after all.

 

* * *

 

 

“Doesn’t it bother you that none of them even glance in your direction?”

 

She and Ginny were outside, wandering by the lake, Ellie watching her reflection as it danced in the dark water.

 

“Not really.”

 

Ginny was looking at her curiously as if she truly wanted to hear the answer. Ginny had softened a little bit as the months had worn on. She’d also gotten paler and sickly and sometimes more scattered, but towards Ellie she had gotten softer, as if they really were friends instead of… whatever…

 

“It would bother me.” Ginny commented with a musing expression, “I wouldn’t be able to stand it at all.”

 

“Oh it’s not so bad, you get used to it.” Ellie said with a shrug.

 

“You’re infinitely more powerful and intelligent than your brother and if he had been anyone else, if you had been anyone else, they would be praising you as the next Merlin. To be looked over simply because of your blood, because of who they think you are, how could you possibly tolerate something like that?”

 

Ellie stopped, no one had ever put it so bluntly before, and she supposed there was some truth to that. She didn’t not feel about it, there was anger and disappointment that brewed deep within her sometimes, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It was never rage.

 

“They don’t matter; they’re not real.” Ellie said with a small sad smile, not entirely sure what she meant but meaning it all the same. People who worshipped Harry, who dismissed her, these people had nothing in them, they were only the reflection of mankind.

 

Ginny stared at her for a few moments as if to see if she was actually serious, if she could be satisfied by that response, and with a small snort she shook her head, “You and I are very different people, Eleanor Potter. You see, to me it doesn’t matter that they don’t exist, as you put it so eloquently. They will remember my name regardless.”

 

* * *

 

 

Hermione was petrified late in the spring and it hit Harry and Ron hard.

 

“We should have watched her more closely.” Harry said dully looking at her frozen and stiff body. “I should have been there.”

 

“She’s not dead.” Ellie offered but it was the wrong thing to say, Harry turned his head to look at her in disbelief, and he opened his mouth to say something…

 

He closed it and shook his head turning his face from her and back to Hermione.

 

Later he’d probably say to Ron that they’d get the bastard that did this to her, they’d make him pay for everyone, but he didn’t say this to Ellie.

 

He wordlessly told her to get out.

 

And so she did, she got out and she stood in the hallway, alone thinking how nothing had changed from the year before. It was still a play, still this great machine called tragedy, and they were still trapped in their roles that weren’t the ones they were supposed to be given.

 

Harry would have been a great hero.

 

As she walked through the hallway, ignoring the wall’s whispers to kill, she wiped away the trail of tears that silently trickled down her cheeks. She had promised herself she wouldn’t descend into the third floor corridor again; she’d made a promise that she would light no more men on fire.

 

It seemed the play might have other things in mind.

 

* * *

 

 

In the end it was as easy as following the trail of chaos and destruction, through the bathroom and down into the Chamber of Secrets, where Ginny had disappeared. Once again Harry was looking for her but once again he would fail to reach the finish line; as he always did.

 

So it was Eleanor Potter alone who made her way into the great chamber, staring into the stone face of Salazar Slytherin, and the translucent young man who smiled over the body of a dying Ginny Weasley.

 

“Ah, if it isn’t my young friend Eleanor Potter.” The young man proclaimed at her entrance practically beaming at her. “Forgive me but I was expecting…”

 

“My brother?” Ellie cut him off.

 

“Well, yes, frankly no need to be so rude about it.” The man said cocking his head as he observed her, “Don’t worry, I’m just as, no I’m happier to see you than him.”

 

Ellie walked forward slowly, feeling something inside her burning, all the emotions burning away until there was only rage as she read the same script she had read a year before.

 

“Don’t be so angry, little bird.” He said moving from Ginny over to her, his smile softening in a superficial manner, “It’s hardly your fault.”

 

“You’re killing her.” Ellie said motioning to Ginny and he nodded.

 

“I’m afraid it’s a necessity, in order that I might live she must die. It’s nothing personal, she just happened to be around at the time.” He looked over at her, a passing glance towards Ginevera Weasley, and then turned back to Ellie.

 

“You know I can’t let you do that.” Ellie said.

 

“Oh, why not? You don’t particularly like her, I remember our first meeting, you already had a bad impression. And she doesn’t particularly like you either, sees you as a… rival I suppose for your brother’s affections.” He grinned at her as if this was a particularly witty joke.

 

“It’s the role I’ve been assigned to play and I must play it.” She said taking a shuddering breath.

 

“No, that’s your dear brother, who isn’t even here.” The young man corrected her, “Besides, I don’t even think you really believe in heroism.”

 

Maybe not but she believed in the play.

 

She made a move towards Ginny, but he cut her off, standing transparent in her path still smiling.

 

“You’re already too late, she’s lost far too much to keep on going now. Why not simply let her fade?”

 

She made to dart around him in the other direction but again he moved, blocking her path.

 

“Is it your father, your mother, perhaps even your dear brother? I notice Gryffindor runs deep in the family, they must have been so disappointed in you.”

 

Again she moved, again he blocked.

 

“Why all this fuss over such a little thing, let it go Eleanor.”

 

She met his eyes, a sharp pale blue, trembling under their intensity.  With a dash she ran straight through him, shuddering as something deep and integral in him resonated deep with her, like a chord had been struck.

 

She made it over to Ginny and began searching for something, something that tied her to the young man, but whatever it was wasn’t immediately evident and the young man was quickly solidifying.

 

“Well, so that’s how you wish to play.” The man said softly in a tone that was almost disappointed, “Very well, I suppose I’ll introduce myself first. My name is Tom Riddle and I am, was, and will ever be Lord Voldemort; the man your little brother destroyed eleven years ago.”

 

She turned slowly to look at him, almost unwillingly, and inside her there were no thoughts.

 

“After this is over I will seek out your brother and kill him, humiliate him, see to it that no one doubts my prowess ever again. And then, and then even I’m not sure, but I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.”

 

He grinned and reached out to touch her, a pale glowing hand resting on her chin and moving it up to look him in the eye. “And you, little bird, will die here tonight in a valiant way that is befitting of the path you have chosen to take. It has been interesting, knowing you, but not integral.”

 

And with that he stood dramatically and called out in a voice of whispers and hisses and in the dark something rumbled and the beast came out of the shadows.

 

* * *

 

 

He combed his fingers through her hair, almost solid, lighter than a normal hand but warm and real. She unconsciously leaned into it, listening as her blood dripped to the floor, her fingers twitched.

 

He had pulled her into his lap when she had fallen, rested her head against his chest, and she could hear the faint echoes of a heartbeat.

 

“Shhh, it’s alright, you did very well.”

 

She heard something’s choked sobs, barely a human noise, and her throat ached with the effort of making the sound.

 

He made that shushing noise again, his arms tightening around her, and began to rock her slightly.

 

The chamber was spinning and the lights were all going out.

 

“It will be soon now.”

 

She closed her eyes, taking a few last breaths, and leaned back against him waiting for all of it to fall away as if it had never been there in the first place.

 

Somewhere along the way the breathing stopped.

 

* * *

 

 

When she opened her eyes again she was in King’s Cross, sitting on a bench, staring forward and looking at the Hogwarts Express with dull eyes.

 

Next to her there was a man, a man with hair like feathers and eyes like hers, a pale thin man who seemed terribly old and terribly sad. Somehow, she thought even as she looked at him, he reminded her of Harry.

 

“I’ve nothing to say.” She commented to the man.

 

“Then there’s nothing you need to say.” He responded a slow smile spreading across his face, a kind smile, the kind her father had tried to give her but never really dared.

 

“I should have something to say; I’ve failed.”

 

He shook his head as if to deny this and reached out hesitantly with one of his own pale hands, a scarred thing that said “I must not tell lies” and took hers. “No one has ever truly failed; not even in the darkest of times, because life and light always go on.”

 

“Life and light…” She said looking to the air, the bright atmosphere of the station, to the way the train glittered in the presumed sunlight.

 

“You are very young to be here.” He said softly still holding her hand.

 

“I was poisoned by a basilisk.” She commented dully though the poison no longer clouded her thoughts or made everything shake and fade in the same instant.

 

“Ah, the Chamber of Secrets…” He brushed away her hair to reveal the lightning bolt scar frowning slightly at it but then deciding ultimately that it didn’t matter, “That’s a very difficult thing to do, you know, killing a basilisk and staying alive afterwards.”

 

She shrugged not sure how to put it, that she hadn’t been left the option of failure, that she had no choice but to succeed and yet she had still died and everything had spun out of control as it always did.

 

“My brother should have been there… I should have been my brother, we should have been switched. I was… I was never right, never good enough, never what anyone wanted!” She brought her feet up onto the bench curling into herself and feeling the tears once again coursing down her cheeks.

 

“I was never meant to be the boy who lived!”

 

The words echoed, too loud, much too loud.

 

“I am so sorry.” The man said, and he pulled her into the dark robes he wore even as she sobbed, “We do not choose what we are though, believe me I tried as well. We take what we are and we follow the winding path dictated to us; knowing that things never truly end.”

 

More hesitantly he said, “You can return, if you so choose, you can go back to face the basilisks and the demons and many more besides. You do not have to take the train; there is your choice.”

 

“I…” She pulled away so that she could look him in the eye and for the first time she felt that someone understood.

 

“There will always be a train to somewhere.”

 

* * *

 

 

When she returned the young Tom Riddle had become solid, was staring at her in disbelief, and when they looked across at each other there were so many things they couldn’t bring themselves to say.


	2. Chapter 2

Ellie Potter had known for a very long time that she had come out wrong…

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing she remembered was his face.

 

The room wasn’t very well lit, a ball of light drifting from the ceiling, but as she blinked into awareness his face was the first thing that came into focus.

 

He was very pretty; with his dark hair that curled slightly about his face, his high cheekbones, his straight aristocratic nose, but perhaps most captivating of all were his eyes. They were blue, a pale blue that she’d never seen in eyes before, almost gray and yet somehow lit up from the inside as if his soul was shining out through them.

 

He seemed familiar and unfamiliar in the same moment and she didn’t know what to make of that.

 

When he saw her moving, shifting slightly, blinking, the light became stronger with a swish of his wand and a smile stole across his features. It was partly relieved, anticipating, happy, and … and something darker that she couldn’t quite place.

 

“Eleanor, Ellie,” He corrected himself reaching out for hands with his own, “You’re awake.”

 

She said nothing to this, not sure how to respond, whether to ask who he was if she was Eleanor or Ellie, to ask who Ellie was supposed to be, to ask why she couldn’t remember anything before that first moment, or why the walls were covered in mold and the room they were in seemed horrifically empty.

 

She sat up ignoring the ache in her muscles, as if she had been lying down for some time, and tried to move forward off the bed.

 

It was as if she was on the edge of panic, thoughts swarming just waiting to reach out and grab her, he squeezed her hands tighter pulling his chair closer to the bed, “It’s alright Ellie, it’s alright, you’re safe…”

 

Then with one hand, his other hand still holding hers, he gently pushed her back down onto the mattress. His hand moved to her forehead, lingered there for a moment, tracing the pattern of a lightning bolt on her forehead, but eventually he moved it away back to her own hands.

 

“I… I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember anything.” She repeated looking over towards him that feeling of panic still welling inside her only postponed slightly by his presence and the warmth of his hands around hers.

 

He gave her a look that was almost pitying then, his eyes softening around the edges slightly, and at the sight of it she felt herself tense but once again he squeezed her hands and waited for her to relax before he explained, “Ellie, do you remember what the spell _Obliviate_ does?”

 

“…It’s used to wipe memories; to make people forget.” She said and it clicked, almost instantaneously as he said it, why everything was just gone and everything felt familiar and unfamiliar in the same moment.

 

“Yes.” He said and in that one word, in his expression, was the explanation that someone had done this to her. Someone wanted to make sure that she didn’t remember anything, not ten minutes, not an hour, but anything at all. Someone had wanted to wipe her from existence.

 

“Why?” She asked him an edge of desperation in her voice that felt unfamiliar; and wasn’t that terrible how she could still feel that things were familiar or unfamiliar but she would never be able to place them.

 

She asked again when he didn’t respond, “What did I know? What did I do?”

 

Her hands were digging into his, clutching at them, but he didn’t seem to mind and his smile turned from something that pitied into something softer perhaps something that cared.

 

“You’re tired,” He said, “You should rest now, this conversation can wait until later.”

 

He didn’t move away but it seemed that the conversation had been shut off, and in that moment she didn’t know if she was relieved that she would have to wait to find out, because surely whatever had happened to her wasn’t good.

 

She took a breath, banishing the thoughts until she could confront them later, Ellie he’d said her name was Ellie. Eleanor, it wasn’t a bad name, it didn’t necessarily feel right but it wasn’t a bad name.

 

“What’s your name, then?” She asked, and he replied to this one with a natural ease, as if there was nothing at all to cause him to hesitate.

 

“Tom.”

 

* * *

 

 

She didn’t know what to make of Tom Marvolo Riddle mostly because he didn’t seem to know what to make of himself either.

 

She’d wondered if he’d always been like this, if she’d always had this opinion of him, without memories it was hard to tell and she always had to go by her gut feeling. The trouble was it seemed as if her instincts weren’t sure what to make of him either.

 

She knew him, she was sure that she knew him, but she didn’t know if she’d liked him or not.

 

He had a lot of likable qualities, not just being pretty to look at either, he was smart, fairly witty, ambitious, sympathetic, charming, and a whole bunch of other things to boot. In the children’s stories featuring magical princes who saved maidens from dark enchantments he’d be pretty much the first thing that came to mind. That was the trouble, those stories were always too simple, because he wasn’t always the prince.

 

Sometimes she got the feeling that he could be very dangerous if he felt like it.

 

He was very quick with the wand for one thing, most of his casting was wordless too, just a flick of the wand and the lights would turn on or off the room would be cleaned. She felt like, she thought she remembered that, most people weren’t able to do things like that.

 

Only, she could be wrong about this, because magic was very easy for her too. It was even more instinctual than his, the walls of every room were cleaned as soon as she walked in, when she wanted to sit she could transfigure a chair out of the dust and air. So maybe she had the wrong idea of what a normal person was capable of and what they weren’t but still...

 

They lived alone in the old house that overlooked the town, it looked like the place had been empty for a long time before Tom had found it, but more than that it had looked like something bad had happened to it. Houses didn’t just fall to ruin for no reason.

 

He also hadn’t bothered to fix it before she started to do it for him, it was like he hadn’t even noticed that the ceiling looked like it was going to cave in or the garden was overgrown, or rather that he’d liked it better that way. He hated this place, she’d catch him glaring at the silent portraits and walls with an expression of contempt when he thought she wasn’t looking, he wanted to see this place burned to the ground.

 

He didn’t burn the place to the ground, didn’t even watch it rot, instead he’d decided to live there and make it barely livable.

 

So she didn’t know what to make of him, or the place where they lived, or about anything that had happened. She focused on getting back on her feet, on getting a grasp on the magic again, and then she would focus on the rest.

 

Still, she was willing to let him wait until he wanted to tell her, she didn’t know if this patience was a normal trait for her or if she was just thrown off by the whole memory loss thing but either way it was true.

 

She was content to get acquainted with the house on the hill and with the mysterious Tom Riddle who lived there with her.

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you going to ask?” 

 

They were sitting in the garden, which still had a bit of a wild look to it even after she’d started weeding. He had put aside whatever work he was doing that morning and told her that he wanted to braid her hair.

 

He had moods and they were always flighty and unpredictable things. At first she thought he’d only had his ups and his downs, his good days and his really bad days, but it was more than that. There were days where he seemed confused, disoriented, as if he had no idea where he was or how he got there. There were days where he was angry, she never saw much of him on these days, she only saw the aftermath in torn portraits, shattered mirrors, and shredded furniture. There were days where he disappeared completely, like he was never even there in the first place, like it was just her who lived in the house on the hill. It seemed like each new week brought a new kind of day and a new all-consuming mood with it and she always woke up each morning wondering which one it would be.

 

Today was a soft day, a day where he smiled a bit more, where he sought out her company, where he didn’t really want to do anything in particular or even talk about anything. He liked to be outside on days like this, to be sitting in the sunlight, looking at the overgrown grass and flowers.

 

“Am I going to ask what?” She asked in response, staring forward, wondering if she should even bother to tackle the garden any further. It looked right somehow, this garden wouldn’t feel the same if it actually looked like it was cared for, the untamed nature suited it.

 

“Anything,” He responded sounding mildly surprised by her indifference, “You haven’t even asked me for your full name everything you know about me, about you, I’ve volunteered. Don’t you want to know?”

 

For a few moments he silently continued to braid, waiting for her to come up with her answer, seeming to have all the time in the world.

 

Finally she said, “Maybe there’s a reason I don’t know.”

 

“What do you mean?” He asked and she turned to look at him, forcing him to stop braiding for a moment and look her in the eye.

 

“Whatever I knew, whatever I was, whatever it was someone decided to snuff me out. Not even to kill me, but to grind everything I was out of me, that’s not the kind of decision someone comes to just because. Maybe there was a reason, an important reason, why I don’t remember.”

 

His hands were still caught in her hair, the braid unfinished, and for a moment she wondered if she would see the mood change; if it had only had the appearance of a soft day but would instead turn into something else.

 

It didn’t though, he smiled instead, that sad smile he sometimes wore, “You always were perceptive, little bird.”

 

He removed one of his hands from her hair to readjust her head, so that she was staring straight ahead, and then he continued where he had left out, “You always remind me how different we see the world at times like these. Had it been me, well, I would certainly not have been as patient as you.”

 

He sighed then, his hands shifting slightly before starting again, “Perhaps you’re right, perhaps it no longer matters what you were. Still, I do know the answers to the questions you haven’t been asking.”

 

He waited for a moment, finishing the braid, and then asked in a voice that was meant to lure animals into traps, “Don’t you want to know?”

 

She turned to face him, taking in his anticipatory expression, wearing a face like the wolf. He was still smiling of course, but the softness was gone, replaced by something sharp and jagged, “Do you want me to know?”

 

The smile turned into something resembling a grin, he hadn’t expected that response, but he liked it, “Yes, I do.”

 

“Well then, tell me a story Tom Riddle.”

 

* * *

 

 

After listening to it, her first thought was that she could see why he had kept it to himself for so long.

 

The whole thing was completely ridiculous and she’d decided about a minute after hearing it that she didn’t believe a word of it.

 

“So this English dark lord or whatever is secretly my father.”  She summarized, they had moved inside for the conversation, which was probably a good decision because it had taken forever. Much longer than it need to since Ellie had pretty much summed up what he’d said in that one sentence.

 

Tom glared slightly at her wording seeming somewhat insulted by her casualness, as if she should be taking this far more seriously, but it was hard to take things seriously when you didn’t even remember who your father or this dark lord was, “You speak parseltongue, that’s proof enough that you’re closely related to him.”

 

She did talk to snakes; that was true. They never really had anything interesting to say but she could talk to them. It also was one of those talents she didn’t like advertising. Something about it felt taboo, dangerous, as if the very act of doing it was sacrilege; a betrayal of everything she was.

 

The first time Tom had caught her at it, when she’d accidentally responded to a snake in the garden instead of at him, she’d thought for a panicked moment that he’d curse her or hit her. He’d stared at her for a moment, suspicion and anger brewing in his eyes, but these had faded before they could go any further and he’d said nothing further about it. Not until now, at the very least.

 

She didn’t do it often but she could talk to snakes.

 

“And this English dark lord is also secretly you?” She pressed making sure to raise her eyebrows as she took in his very young features. Tom said that she was almost thirteen, that she’d turn thirteen on the 31st of July, but Tom couldn’t be that much older. He didn’t look like an adult, he was on his way there, he was very tall but there was still some softness to his features and she wasn’t even sure he had any facial hair.

 

Tom didn’t flush, didn’t show such obvious signs of embarrassment or anger, but his mouth did curl downward and his glare sharpened for a few moments, “When you dabble in powerful magic life is not so simple as to be read at a glance.”

 

Perhaps that was true, she wouldn’t know, or perhaps she did and that was why she didn’t remember.

 

Ellie took a sip of tea wondering how far she was going to let this slide because there were parts that were well thought out and parts that were just terrible. She thought that, maybe he didn’t really want her to believe it.

 

Or, he wanted her to believe it and he didn’t want her to believe it, sometimes Tom wanted two contradictory things at the same time. It was a bad habit of his.

 

It was possible, she supposed, it would explain the parseltongue which was an inherited magic. As the daughter of a dark lord, if anyone had found out, she would be used as a chess piece against him or perhaps even worse. It would make sense to get rid of something like that but then…

 

Then that didn’t explain why she was here, where Tom came into all of this, as the dark lord who wasn’t the dark lord. It didn’t explain how Tom had found her, why he felt he had to look for her, and why she stayed with him now.

 

There were still a lot of gaping holes in his story and she thought he knew that.

 

But she’d told him already that she didn’t really want to know, whatever had happened, whatever she really was she didn’t want to know.

 

So instead she let it slide and said a simple, “Alright, thanks for telling me.”

 

The anger dripped from his expression replaced by something that looked almost like disappointment but whatever he was thinking he didn’t bother to say it out loud. She never was one to forecast his mercurial mood swings.

 

* * *

 

 

It was late in the summer, almost September, when she first witnessed one of Tom’s really bad days.

 

He’d had them before, they’d been less frequent as the summer progressed, but every now and then one would occur. He usually stayed out of sight though, that’s how she knew they were happening, and only later would he show up again looking exhausted and hollow.

 

He only liked showing her certain sides of him, the good sides, the driven moods, the soft moods, and it was true that sometimes he would get angry or depressed but these were flashes of emotions.

 

She’d woken up to the feeling of shadows, of things growing in dark places, and it took her a moment to recognize it as magic. Pure unadulterated magic that meant shit was about to go down. She’d flown out of bed, not bothering to change from sleeping robes, and made her way to the source in the kitchen.

 

He was leaning over the table, his face hidden from her view, but even without being able to see his expression she knew that something was off. The emotions, the magic, it was coming off him in waves; something splintering and cold.

 

She stopped in the doorway suddenly, taking in the stiff shoulders, the hands clutching at his hair, and seemed unable to turn back.

 

“I am not a memory.” He said, and she wondered if he really said it because he still was looking down at that table, his back to her.

 

She didn’t move, he knew she was there anyway.

 

“I am not… No, I refuse to be a memory, a replication, a derivative… I am not a memory.” His fingers clenched, digging harder into his hair, there was a noise from him that almost didn’t sound human.

 

She took a step forward and he turned, his eyes meeting her, and they seemed dazed almost frantic and she’d never seen them look like that.

 

“Ellie?” He asked and she found her body being pulled across the room to him, against her will, until she was being held against his chest.

 

“Tom?” She asked as he pulled her closer to him, so that his breath was heavy on her ear.

 

She’d been here before, she knew, she’d been in this position before. Heartbeat racing, eyes wide, staring ahead and feeling him at her back. She’d been here before, terrified, not knowing what was happening and just staring ahead.

 

“Don’t leave, promise me you won’t leave.” He said, she was finding it difficult to breathe, he was holding her too tight.

 

“Where would I go?” She asked, in between labored breathes, trying to push his arms away but they only became tighter.

 

“I… Sometimes my head… What did I do to myself? Sometimes I wonder, sometimes I’m glad he’s dead. Isn’t that terrible? Because if he’s dead then I never have to know if… What would he do with me? What would I do with me? This wasn’t how it was supposed to work… Sometimes I’m still in that diary, Ellie. Sometimes I wake up and I think I’m still there, like I just dreamed everything.” He let go, she took in great breaths, but before she could think so clearly he turned her head with his hands so that she was facing him.

 

He didn’t look like himself, he normally was fairly composed, or he tried to look composed. Here all that had been abandoned, and his eyes, his eyes were too bright.

 

“I had terrible dreams in there, wonderful terrible dreams, because I thought they were real sometimes. I forgot that they weren’t really me, that I… That I never got to be him. But I , I never would have made up you, would I? I don’t even like people, so I never would have made up you.”

 

She didn’t say anything to this, anything to the relieved smile that appeared on his face, to the way he seemed to relax.

 

“Of course, I wouldn’t have, so it has to be real.” His hands dropped from her face and fell limply to his side.

 

She didn’t move, just watched with wide eyes, wondering just where he was going with all of this and if the storm had really past.

 

“Promise me, promise you won’t leave.” He said, his eyes fluttering shut, sweat cooling on his brow.

 

“I… I promise.” She said and wondered if she should have responded at all, but it was done, and she felt tension leave the room as well as a glowing feeling like something irrevocable had just occurred.

 

“Good.”

 

It was probably as close as he would get to saying thank you.

 

* * *

 

 

Fall rolled in and with it Ellie got to witness a whole new set of moods from Tom.

 

It’d started one morning in September, not too long after his mental breakdown and the weirdest conversation they’d ever had, they’d been eating breakfast prepared by a few house elves he’d managed to find and he’d been staring at her.

 

Tom did stare a lot, at first she’d found it a little alarming, but over time she’d gotten used to it but that morning it had been going on for a particularly long time.

 

“You haven’t practiced magic all summer.” He finally started.

 

“No.” She responded, as if this should be obvious. One of the few things she remembered was that underage magic outside of school was discouraged, and she didn’t really feel the need to practice, like she knew everything she needed to already.

 

Besides she didn’t even know if she had a wand, Tom had never mentioned it, and it never seemed like she’d needed it so practicing spells would have been kind of moot anyway.

 

“If… You’d be at Hogwarts already, right now.” He said, and she wondered what that was supposed to mean.

 

He’d hinted that she’d attended a magical school before he’d found her, before… whatever had happened. And sometimes if she thought hard about it there were people, things, that she was missing. Like there was some hole in her chest, and Hogwarts felt like it could belong in that category.

 

That being said she had left Hogwarts and whoever was in it behind, she didn’t need to go back.

 

“Maybe.” She said, shrugging, but he didn’t smile at the action but only stared at her harder.

 

Then he said something that only he would ever say to anyone.

 

“I’ve decided to take over the government.”

 

Ellie almost spit out her tea, “What?”

 

“The ministry is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent; our country is headed to ruin and I will not stand by and watch as it collapses under its own weight. I’m going to take over this pathetic island country and create a magical empire.”

 

She really had no idea what to say to that, “That’s great, I hope it goes well.”

 

Here his eyes sharpened on her and she felt as if she had just failed some vital exam.

 

“You’re going to help.”

 

“I am?” She responded, she didn’t ever remember agreeing to something like this, but then she didn’t remember most things so it could have happened.

 

“Yes, you are. You’re a very talented witch, Eleanor, far more talented than… At any rate it would be a waste of your talents if I just let you sit here and do nothing.” Somehow he made it seem like an insult not just to him but to the world itself that she would not try to take over the government with her overwhelming magical talent.

 

She wondered if pointing out that she didn’t really have an issue with the government would get her anywhere. Tom seemed determined, more than she had ever seen him before, as if he had found his purpose and was now dead set upon reaching it.

 

An unholy fire was lit in his eyes.

 

“Aren’t I a little young to be a rebel?” She asked instead and then looked at him critically, “Aren’t you a little young to be a rebel?”

 

He was not amused by that remark, “Of course not.”

 

She thought he agreed with her though, secretly, that you should at least be able to grow a beard before you topple governments. However whatever had prompted Tom to decide this probably wasn’t about the incompetence of the government but was about something entirely different; something he only hinted at but never shared. And for whatever reason he wanted Ellie along for the ride.

 

As she pondered this Tom was manically scribbling down on a piece various titles ranging from what appeared to be school books to much older and thicker texts, “You’ll need to read these texts to have a greater understanding of the nature of magic; so far you seem to work through instinct alone and while this is impressive to be truly great you’ll need to study. We’ll start with the Hogwarts curriculum, work our way through the years, and then turn to more sophisticated theories…”

 

The page was quickly filling with titles and Ellie felt a bit of a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realized that Tom was serious; he was going to make her read all of those books.

 

“Um… Tom…”

 

He ignored her, continuing to plan the future aloud, “I’ll catch myself up on the current political climate; find out who’s who and how I can convince them to follow me and we’ll do practical work when I’m not busy with that…”

 

She wasn’t quite sure how to put it, or why she had this feeling, but Ellie felt like she really disliked school and forced learning. The very idea of it, of school, made her cringe a little bit and it felt like she was resigning herself to something that was both tedious and painful.

 

“Tom,” She repeated more forcefully and this time he did look up at her, stopped writing for a few moments, and waited with impatience for her to continue, “I really don’t think I like school.”

 

She’d expected him to snap something about not caring if she didn’t like school but to her surprise something about that statement seemed to resonate with him. As if he knew that she had a very good reason for not liking school.

 

He set his pen down with a sigh, raking a hand through his hair, and said, “Ellie, it won’t be like Hogwarts was, I promise.”

 

Ellie had the feeling then that Hogwarts, whatever had happened at Hogwarts, hadn’t been good. She also still didn’t like school.

 

He must have seen the hesitation in her expression because he added on, “Please, Ellie, just try.”

 

Something about the way he said that, the way he looked at her, made her nod slowly in acceptance and he returned to his lists and his plans as if this brief interlude of feeling had never happened.

 

It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

 Tom was lying to her.

 

She’d always known this more or less, known that he’d left details out, shifted facts around, that the story he’d told her was more fiction than truth. She’d always known Tom was lying, she just hadn’t cared, and she wasn’t sure she did care when the thought finally cemented itself.

 

It took time to reach that thought, it took all of fall, where he made her read and perform at a rate that she thought was probably illegal at wizarding institutions. No, it wasn’t until Christmas that she realized just how much Tom was trying to coerce her into some point of view; some role he wished for her to play.

 

Neither of them really celebrated Christmas, Ellie only knew vaguely what it was supposed to represent and Tom seemed vehemently against it, she only knew it was arriving from the strung up lights in the village below as well as the approaching date.

 

It was around that time, with the holiday atmosphere, that Ellie began to realize that something was very off about her situation something she hadn’t considered before. Ellie had never given much thought to the people who had known her before the memory loss, before the she lived with Tom, and with the holidays their absence seemed to come rushing back.

 

She couldn’t tell if she missed them, if she loved them, if they loved and missed her, but their presence grew in her heart until they haunted that month like snow that had yet to fall. It seemed wherever she turned she thought of them, the people she’d known and lost, and as January approached she found she could no longer set them aside.

 

It was then that she first started asking questions about a time she had promised herself never to question.

 

“Tom, does anyone miss me, out there I mean?”

 

He’d stiffened, almost instinctively at the question, and though he tried to hide it through a mask of casualness his eyes had burned a far too dangerous shade of blue.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

She motioned towards the window, towards outside, “I haven’t lived here forever and… I knew more than you… Is anyone looking for me?”

 

He considered this, and she could see it, though he hid it masterfully she could see his indecision. How to phrase this, how to put this, how to give enough but not too much or anything at all; all these decisions were etched into his eyes.

 

“You were not well liked.” He said finally, “They looked for you at first but they did not search for too long, they believed they found an explanation easily enough. They looked but they didn’t really try.”

 

She opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, “Would you tell me the truth if I asked?”

 

He started laughing, more than she had ever seen him laugh before, breaking into hysterics and looking as if he was going to fall apart. Ellie was petrified by the sight unable to move backwards away from him.

 

“Oh, Ellie, don’t you understand? That was the truth!” He said before breaking into even greater hysterics but before he could respond he calmed himself and with a wistful smile took her hands in his, “They no longer matter, Ellie, they were never very important to begin with.”

 

“They were never real.”

 

* * *

 

 

The year rolled past and slowly but surely she found herself becoming familiar with Tom Riddle and in turn him with her. They side stepped each other quite well, in that dilapidated house that was too grand for two people, and she couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever known her so thoroughly even when she’d had her memories to guide her.

 

She still wasn’t sure what she thought of him, she was even less sure now than she had been in that first moment, when she’d first seen his face.

 

He was both the prince and the revolutionary in the same moment, his good traits did not die even when his eyes were cold, similarly his darkness didn’t fade even when there was a smile on his face. He was a thousand different feelings stored in a single person so that whenever he turned one would catch sight of a different facet.

 

He would always be soft and sharp, cold and warm, he would always be his duality.

 

She grew to realize that he didn’t really want to take over Britain, no matter how much he claimed he did, he worked at it but he made no real progress within the year. Britain was a hobby, a game, a way to provide himself purpose without looking for deeper meaning and because of that his interest in it was shallow at best.

 

But even his shallow interest could be overwhelming at times.

 

He was close, sometimes he was too close, as if he could read her very thoughts just by catching a glimpse of her face. And she was close to him in turn, where she knew just by seeing his back whether it was a day to leave him be or seek out his company.

 

Soon she was fourteen, he the same ineffable age he always was, and it seemed like he was the world.

 

Perhaps things would have continued in that manner for another year or two, until he grew bored with the game of half-hearted revolution and moved onto new ventures, but there were outside forces in this game they played.

 

He had assumed the dark lord, the him who was not him, had died thirteen years before. He did not realize that death sometimes wasn’t as final as it seemed.

 

* * *

 

 

“You’ll need to go back to Hogwarts.” He said slowly as if unsure of the words.

 

“What?”

 

It was similar to that day almost a year before, where he’d said they were going to take over the government, it was morning and they were at the table. This time was different in that he had “The Prophet” in front of him and was reading the cover page with a stunned expression.

 

“He’s… That’s what those memories meant, I thought that Quirrell had lied to you that he couldn’t possibly… My other half has returned.”  He set the paper down on the table, the cover facing Lily. She glanced down at it, looking at the picture of dark swirling green clouds and the headline, “Dark Mark Seen at Quidditch World Cup”

 

She reached for the paper, to read more of it, but before she could do so Tom snatched it from her.

 

“Something you don’t want me reading?” She asked and as she expected he didn’t deign to give a response to that.

 

“I’ll need you to attend Hogwarts, by my eyes and ears in the place. I’ll… I’ll need to meet with him, no see him, he probably already realizes I’m here…” Here Tom looked at the walls almost in panic, as if they hid some spy who had managed to catch him off guard.

 

“I thought Hogwarts was a school, why would I need to go to a school?” Ellie asked, distracting Tom from his most recent bout of paranoia.

 

“Hogwarts isn’t just a school, in many ways it is Magical Britain, everything of importance somehow ties back to Hogwarts… There are a few people in particular that I’ll need you to watch.”

 

“Okay, but how am I going to get into Hogwarts anyway?”

 

He seemed stunned at the question as if he hadn’t thought of that either, for a few moments he appeared dazed, muttering possible plans, “Hogwarts doesn’t usually accept transfer students but I believe it is possible… Of course you could always return as… no, no we won’t do that. Yes, you’ll have to test in as a transfer student, older is better. You could pass for a sixteen year old, who’s attending Hogwarts for her NEWT courses.”

 

He seemed to consider her, the sixteen year old fake version of her who was attending Hogwarts for her NEWT exams, and while he wasn’t overly pleased by his own idea it didn’t look like he was throwing it out the window either.

 

Tom usually did manage to figure these things out though, when he was motivated, so she set aside her doubts there. There was still something about Hogwarts though, the name, the idea of a wizarding school that she didn’t like.

 

“It will most likely only be for the year, perhaps less, depending on… circumstances.” Tom finished lamely, substituting circumstances for an idea that was probably a lot more complicated.

 

“Right, and I’m going to be spying on people?” Ellie clarified.

 

“In short, yes, perhaps more but for now it’s uncertain.” He seemed unwilling to speak further letting all the uncertainties hang about in the air. And for the first time in a year Ellie felt that something was outside of his control, something was unplanned, and it made her feel strangely nervous.

 

As if things were getting more out of hand than either of them realized.

 

Hogwarts, something dark lingered in those syllables, something lurked in its shadow.

 

“Well, I guess we better be getting my books.” 


	3. Chapter 3

“Helen Müller, age seventeen, pleased to meet you.”

 

A very confused Harry Potter blinked up at her, taking in the sight of Helen Müller holding out a hand in front of her, and it appeared that he was at such a loss for words that he couldn’t even respond. His friends weren’t doing much better and were both sort of staring at her with raised eyebrows.

 

It was the night of the sorting feast after all the first years had been placed and Helen Müller, the most recent addition to Gryffindor and sixth year transfer student, was now keeping the promise she had made to Tom. That she would listen, that she would watch, that she would report, and that she would be believable.

 

She wasn’t entirely sure that Dumbledore had believed her backstory, when he’d flipped through her documentation, her OWL scores, her reasons for attending Hogwarts for her last two years before taking the NEWT exams, or anything else but he seemed willing to play along. He’d seemed distracted or rather he seemed like he was looking for someone far more lethal and dangerous than she appeared; as if the last thing he expected was a small sixteen year old girl.

 

No doubt someone would be watching her just as carefully as she was watching everyone else. In the corner of her eye she caught the dark glance of the Potions’ Master as well as curiousity from other members of the staff; but this wasn’t important. She had been sent to watch, not necessarily to act, and so there wasn’t much they could get out of Helen Müller.

 

After all, Tom had been very careful when he’d made her up.

 

Helen had lived in Germany for most of her life, her father being German while her mother British, and neither of her parents had been magical. On her eleventh birthday she received a letter from Durmstang and her parents had been hesitant to abandon her muggle education for a wizarding one, with further investigation they realized that there was an older German cousin in the family who was a wizard and was willing to teach Helen up until a certain point. She’d proven to be very talented, more so than her older cousin, and soon enough it became clear that there was only so much he could teach her. As she’d grown older she’d realized she’d wanted to pursue a career in the wizarding world and so she’d applied to Hogwarts as a transfer student to take her NEWT courses.

 

She looked almost unremarkable, as if someone had forced plain features onto her face, small for her age, her hair and eyes were a non-descript shade of brown her clothing non-distinctive, at a glance she seemed like nothing much. Only her expression, the paleness of her face, the way she held herself gave her away as being more than she seemed.

 

It was a far cry from the Ellie that had lived in a house on a hill with Tom; which was what Tom had probably been aiming for.

 

Not that Tom had given her much of an explanation of what he was aiming for. Sometimes she had the feeling that she wasn’t spying so much to gather information as to get her out of the house; as if there was something he needed doing that he didn’t want her seeing.  

 

So there she was now, a few days after her acceptance and sorting into Hogwarts, staring at the boy who lived and trying to get a feel for him. He looked tired, more than he looked brave or powerful he seemed exhausted, as if the world had been slowly grinding him into dust.

 

He tried to hide it, behind a worn smile, but it was in the sharpness of his green eyes and the clenching of his hands.

 

“Right, transfer student…” Harry Potter said dully, something almost derisive in that statement, and she felt her own forced smile drop a little bit as she took this in, “Look, I don’t like people making a fuss over the boy who lived thing. I’m just Harry, so if you’re going to make a big deal you might as well leave.”

 

His friends looked at him with worried expressions but didn’t interrupt although the bushy haired girl looked as if she had strong objections to this.

 

“I never mentioned anything about you being the boy who lived.” She pointed out but he shrugged, as if to say that she didn’t have to say it because she had meant it.

 

Just Harry, there was some truth to that, probably more than he liked. He didn’t look like much, certainly not the savior of Wizarding Britain who as an infant had managed to destroy the dark lord. He looked like any other fourteen year old boy, no even worse, he was a small near-sighted sulking fourteen year old boy who at a glance looked like he could be knocked over by someone just breathing on him.

 

Then again she and Tom didn’t necessarily look powerful at a glance, Tom being bizarrely young and her being, well, her but all the same Harry Potter and power beyond imagination just weren’t clicking.

 

There was something else though that was nagging at her, as she stared at him, she felt as if she knew him but more as if he had been important. Like Harry Potter had mattered at some point in time and that she had failed him in some terrible manner. So that even the sight of him, of those dull and accusing eyes, felt like a knife in her back.

 

As Tom had been familiar and unfamiliar Harry Potter was as well.

 

She turned to look at his friends, the ginger boy and the bushy haired girl, who also looked unremarkably prepubescent with gangly limbs and too large of teeth. They also seemed familiar, less so than Harry Potter, but something in her absent memory was ringing dully at the sight of them as if she at least had known them. If she was going to take a guess though she’d say that she’d probably mildly disliked them if she paid them any attention at all.

 

“Well, if he’s not going to introduce himself…” She said holding her hand out to the pair of them and waiting for one of them to respond.

 

“…Hermione Granger, and this is Ron Weasley, we’re all fourth years… You’re from Germany, headmaster Dumbledore said, and you were homeschooled? What was it like? Oh you’ll have to tell me all about it, I’ve always wondered about magical communities in other countries…”

 

And it was to Ellie’s growing horror that she realized she had unleashed a torrent of constant questions on her background and impressions from one Hermione Granger and that it wouldn’t end until after the dinner had ended and they were escorted to their common rooms.

 

* * *

 

_Tom,_

_After minutes of persuasion and threatening the hat agreed to put me into Gryffindor. I hope you’re happy._

_Albus Dumbledore is more cautious than he acts and is waiting and watching as I wait and watch. He also likes lemon drops, which taste terrible._

_Madeye Moody is insane and dresses like a pirate._

_Harry Potter is a fourteen year old boy and he acts like one. His friend Hermione Granger talks too much and his friend Ron Weasley eats too much._

_Sincerely,_

_Ellie_

* * *

 

 

_Ellie,_

_Be more informative. I didn’t bribe ministry officials, send you to take your OWL exams, pay for your school supplies, and send you off to bloody Scotland so you could send me an uninformative sentence like, “Harry Potter is a fourteen year old boy and acts like one.”_

_Put a small amount of effort into your work and describe things in a substantial paragraph at least._

_Do better._

* * *

 

 

The first few months her encrypted letters to Tom were fairly uninteresting as there was nothing to report.

 

Living without Tom was weird, for most of the time she could remember Tom had always been around, missing him was a bit like missing a limb. She kept looking for him, reaching for his distinctive magical aura, each time she entered a room and she had to remind herself that he really wasn’t here. That he was off doing whatever it was Tom did when she wasn’t around. She didn’t know if she’d ever get used to the feeling

 

Luckily there were enough distractions in the form of school, sleeping, and actually doing her job by keeping an eye on the headmaster and the boy savior.

 

She noted small details, such as the fact that the headmaster often watched the boy who lived like she did, with a too calculating expression and that the boy who lived sometimes would defiantly stare back, blazing coals burning in the depths of his pupils.

 

The boy had few friends, most of his housemates were acquaintances at best. His only friends were Granger and Weasley and even they didn’t seem that close at times. Harry Potter had shut himself off, he would sit by himself late at night in the common room, and he rarely joined in his friends’ laughter and meant it. His eyes were always burning, his fists always clenched, and his back always stiff.

 

“Harry Potter?”

 

She’d asked one of her classmates about him, Cedric Diggory. She liked Diggory he struck her as an honest and earnest guy, and perhaps that was the Hufflepuff speaking, but he seemed as if he would give her an unbiased outsider’s perspective on Harry Potter.

 

“He seems angry.” She clarified and with that Cedric’s expression changed from one of confusion to distant understanding.

 

“He wasn’t always like that, but I didn’t really know him back then… I still don’t know him now either. He seemed happier though, two years ago.”

 

“What happened two years ago?” She prompted when Cedric failed to explain.

 

“His sister was killed.”

 

She hadn’t asked how, hadn’t asked why, had only sat there as Cedric had eventually turned to go to his next class her head spinning. Something about those words, about Harry Potter having a sister, about her dying, about something happening two years ago was sinking inside her mind like a lead weight.

 

Harry Potter had had a twin sister and there weren’t many who knew her name; she was only important in the fact that she had died two years before. There had been a monster unleashed in the school, from the Chamber of Secrets, and many had been petrified, two had died. They had almost shut Hogwarts down because of it.

 

They had never found her body, or Ginny Weasley’s, but years had passed now and it seemed logical to think that they were both dead.

 

As she sat there, staring blankly ahead, she couldn’t help but remember that it was almost two years ago that she had woken up to a house on the hill and Tom’s face in front of her.

 

She also couldn’t help but notice, after asking from multiple sources, that Harry’s sister’s name had been Eleanor Potter.

 

Ellie Potter.

 

* * *

 

 

In her next letter she didn’t lie, but she left out more than Tom would have liked.

 

_Tom,_

_Harry Potter is angry, bitter, and grieving over his dead sister but otherwise is uninteresting. Nothing else to report._

_Sincerely,_

_Ellie_

* * *

 

 

October 31, 1994.

 

Helen Müller, despite being a transfer student, was proving to be one of the most promising students Hogwarts had ever seen. She was thought of as a little odd but genius could easily lead to eccentricity as shown by Dumbledore so many didn’t think anything of it. If anything her Gryffindor year mates were somewhat proud of her, asked her for help, and she never knew what to make of their fond regard.

 

It was shallow, she ended up deciding, because they didn’t really see her face and they didn’t really know her name. Tom’s feelings, flighty and fickle as they were, had infinitely more weight to them.

 

Ellie spent her time doing her work, watching Albus Dumbledore, watching Harry Potter, and digging into the past of one Eleanor Potter and attempting to find just why an unseen monster might seek to destroy her.

 

From Hermione Granger she’d learned it was a basilisk, but basilisks didn’t steal memories, and that someone called the heir of Slytherin had been controlling it and setting it loose in Hogwarts. Only, they had never discovered who the heir was or if there had ever been an heir at all.

 

“Harry thinks… Harry thinks that Ellie might have won, might have defeated him somehow.” Hermione Granger had explained once she and Helen Müller had gotten a chance to talk about the events of two years ago.

 

“She was twelve.” Ellie said, as if this contradicted Harry’s theory.

 

Hermione shook her head with a pained smile, “Ellie was, well you’d have to see her to believe it, but she was incredibly gifted, a true genius. I… I was always jealous of her, she always scored higher than me without even needing to try. If anyone could defeat the heir, kill a basilisk, then it would have been her.”

 

“Do you think she did?”

 

Hermione hesitated for a moment then shook her head slowly, “I don’t know, the heir disappeared when she and Ginny did but… She never came back either. Harry likes to think that she won but… He blames himself, he shouldn’t but he does, because he’s the boy who lived and he thinks that means it should have been him instead.”

 

Perhaps it should have, that was the way the story was usually written, perhaps Harry Potter wasn’t that far off the mark.

 

Further details were hard to come by, Hermione didn’t know everything and was only willing to share what she felt was necessary; the reason why Harry was the way he was. Why his mood swings now were nothing compared to what he had been in the past, practically catatonic at the end of his second, and nothing but rage and guilt in his third.

 

This year he seemed tired, determined, and so very angry but his rage was no longer as visible as Hermione had described it.

 

At least, that was how it had seemed until October 31, 1994 the day the champions for three schools were selected for the Triwizard tournament.

 

Ellie frankly didn’t get it, it seemed a bit too much like the gladiators in ancient Rome, sure there was honor and glory but there also were a lot of dead bodies. It wasn’t even real glory either, contrived glory, where people charged into battle when there wasn’t even a reason to. No one else seemed to think this way though, as soon as it was announced the whole castle was talking about it, and it seemed like everyone wanted to enter.

 

Ellie had discovered, after leaving the house on the hill, that she understood normal people even less than she understood Tom.

 

So it was sitting there silently in anticipation with the rest of her house that she witnessed the night turn into a train wreck.

 

The first three names were to be expected, if everyone’s expressions were anything to go by, from Beauxbatons the veela descendent Fleur Delacour was selected, from Durmstang the Bulgarian quidditch star Viktor Krum, and from Hogwarts the brilliant and gallant Cedric Diggory.

 

But there was a fourth name.

 

There had never been a fourth name selected before, and they almost meant to ignore it, but the goblet had insisted. And it was gravely that Albus Dumbledore looked across at Harry Potter and said the final name, “Harry Potter, Hogwarts champion.”

 

For a moment everyone just turned to stare, as if they had just heard the train’s breaks slam and knew what was going to happen, and in their eyes there was shock, anger, and even a smidge of betrayal. And Harry Potter was in the center of it all, his hand shaking, like there was a muggle spotlight hanging over his head.

 

“Of course,” He whispered and then louder shouted, “Of course, of course I’m the Hogwarts champion! Why would I ever think that I wouldn’t be?”

 

He stood then, throwing his dishes to the floor causing those around him to flinch, “Well, are you not entertained? Is this not what you came here to see?”

 

He held his hands out, waiting for someone, anyone in the audience to respond that yes, they had come to watch the show that was Harry Potter’s life. “Well, aren’t you?!”

 

Hermione grabbed Harry’s sleeve and his head whipped to look down at hers, she silently shook her head no, and something in him seemed to deflate so that he just stood there looking so terribly empty.

 

“Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore called, causing Harry’s head to slowly lift towards him, “You must follow the champions into the back room, you have been selected.”

 

A thin smile appeared on the boy’s face, and in the too silent hall he stepped into the aisle, and slowly made his way past them all and out to where instructions were being given to the contending champions.

 

And he was still burning, even as he walked, his anger still burned too brightly.

 

* * *

 

 

_Tom,_

_Harry Potter has been selected as the fourth champion for the Triwizard Tournament; once again the world shifts all its natural order in favor of the play. The protagonist must have dragons to face, after all._

_Sincerely,_

_Ellie_

\---

 

_Ellie,_

_Keep him alive._

* * *

 

 

There were to be three tasks in the Triwizard Tournament and they were supposedly age appropriate, but Harry Potter was a near sighted fourteen year old boy who was three years younger than his other competitors.

 

He was also being socially ostracized by almost everyone in the school.

 

They seemed to think that he had somehow put his name in the cup, and that by doing so he had betrayed all of them. There were several rumors floating around of why he did it, some said it was just for his ego, others said it was about his dead sister, but whatever the reason they all seemed to have decided that they despised Harry Potter. Even Weasley, one of Harry’s closest friends, had started wearing a ‘Potter Stinks’ badge around campus.

 

It was around this time that Helen Müller would have her second direct conversation with Harry Potter.

 

She’d spoken to Hermione Granger often enough, they studied in the library together, and sometimes Harry Potter would come up but she hadn’t bothered to talk directly to the boy who lived since that first disastrous meeting.

 

Tom hadn’t been thrilled by that but he also hadn’t been too disappointed, as if he’d expected first impressions to go poorly, or else had been secretly hoping they would. Which was a bit contradictory considering that he’d wanted her to spy on him but Ellie still had the feeling that spying wasn’t really about spying. And besides, if anyone could link Helen Müller and Eleanor Potter then it would be her twin brother.

 

Tom liked to keep his secrets even if he did not always guard them well.

 

She found him on the couch, staring into the fireplace, at a very early hour in the morning looking as if he hadn’t slept in days.

 

She thought she almost gave him a heart attack when she flopped down onto the couch beside him, “You look a little worn out.”

 

He glanced at her momentarily before looking back into the fire, “What do you want?”

 

Well, if he wanted to be blunt, “Dragons.”

 

“I’m sorry?” He asked and this time he did turn to look at her, look at her fully.

 

Keep him alive, Tom had said, and at first she’d thought he was being melodramatic and paranoid but then she’d gone and seen that there were dragons. If he was fighting dragons he’d need all the help he could get.

 

“The first task is dragons, if you don’t believe me you can see for yourself, Hagrid’s got them chained up in the Forbidden Forest.”

 

“I… I know, I saw, why are you telling me?” He asked slowly looking genuinely confused.

 

“I think, if I was going to be put into a pit with a dragon, I’d prefer to be told about it beforehand.” She said and he nodded slowly, seeming to see her for the first time, but he still seemed confused.

 

“But… We barely know each other and at the beginning of the year I was… I wasn’t exactly nice to you.”

 

It hadn’t seemed as if he was really nice to anyone, even his friends he had a tendency to snap at when he wasn’t careful. But that was all irrelevant, this wasn’t about being nice, “I don’t care, that wasn’t the point.”

 

For a moment he just stared at her, and then slowly he began to smile and he stuck out his hand, “I’m Harry Potter.”

 

She blinked at it, “I know.”

 

“No, we’re… We’re redoing our introduction, from September, I’m Harry Potter and you’re Helen Müller. Isn’t that right?” His smile grew, his mouth opening to reveal straight white teeth, and when she took his hand it felt very warm in hers.

 

“That’s right.”

 

“You didn’t enter the tournament?” He asked once they had let go and she shook her head, it wasn’t exactly her thing to go put herself in mortal danger for the entertainment of the masses, that wasn’t the reason she was here. Besides, if she had then Tom probably would have thrown a fit, or thrown something a whole lot worse than a fit.

 

“I really didn’t want to either, I mean of course I didn’t put my name in, but even if I could I wouldn’t have done it… It’s just like my first and second year, but this time Ellie isn’t here to save me.” He smiled wistfully and turned back to the fire momentarily, staring into its depths.

 

“Ellie was your sister, right?”

 

The boy nodded slowly, “Yes, she was.”

 

For a moment he sat there, probably wanting to remember in silence, but his resolve seemed to crumble and with a deep breath he kept talking, “She was put in Slytherin, I never understood that. My first year at Hogwarts I completely ignored her, I was stupid and thought the houses meant something, even when I almost got put in Slytherin too. I ran around with Hermione and Ron and I just ignored her, and I knew she was miserable, but it was like I didn’t care.” He stopped here, a hitch in his voice, and took a moment to calm himself down.

 

At this point, Ellie thought to herself, she was probably more of a prop than a person. Harry just wanted to talk to someone who didn’t really know him but was willing to listen, he’d probably talked enough with his friends and his parents, and now he wanted to talk at her. Still she couldn’t help but be transfixed as she watched Harry Potter fall apart in front of her.

 

“It wasn’t until she almost died, until she faced down Voldemort alone, without any friends, without me, that I realized what an ass I’d been. I almost lost her that day and I promised myself that I’d never lose her again, that I’d never let this happen again, that the next time I would face the dark lord and the monsters so she wouldn’t have to. I promised… I made a promise, and I didn’t manage to keep it even once.”

 

To her horror and fascination there were tears gathering in the corners of his eyes and his voice was wobbling, he took off his glasses and rubbed a sleeve against his eyes but continued to talk all the same, “She was more Gryffindor than I ever was. I couldn’t do anything without my friends, without my family, and at the end of things I never managed to even meet whatever it was that needed fighting. She was always alone and she never ever asked for any help; even though I was the boy who lived she never… She died alone, in wherever the Chamber of Secrets is, and no one even remembers her name.” He was almost sobbing at this point but before he could descend too far a harsh laugh broke through the tears, as if even through the pain something was absurdly funny.

 

“They always remember my name, you know, they always want to shake my hand but people barely even knew that she existed. And now it’s happening all over again and she isn’t even here… She isn’t here.”

 

She stared at him, unsure what to do as he buried his face into his hands, hunching in on himself. Tom’s downswings, his periods of desperation and madness were different than this, somehow she knew what to do with Tom. She understood Tom, even when he seemed ineffable, some part of him resonated with her.

 

Hesitantly she reached out to touch Harry, he leaned into it, and stiffly she pulled him into her arms and tried to think of something to say.

 

Because he was right, she may have been Ellie Potter once, but Ellie Potter wasn’t here. Helen Müller was sitting with him and beneath that was just Ellie; Tom Riddle’s Ellie. She could never go back to being that girl, whoever she had been.

 

So she said the only words she could think of.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

* * *

 

 

_Tom,_

_On a broom Harry Potter can outfly even dragons._

_Madeye Moody is still insane and I’m fairly certain that his lectures are illegal._

_Sincerely,_

_Ellie_

* * *

 

 

Harry Potter asked her to the Yule Ball and to her surprise she said yes.

 

She supposed she could say that they had become friends. After that night she’d told him about the dragons he seemed different. He was still angry, he still burned and grieved in the same instant, but he seemed lighter than before. Sometimes she could catch him smiling, getting lost in the little moments.

 

She discovered that she wanted him to be happy in the way that she wanted Tom to be happy. She wanted them to appreciate standing still, to know that life didn’t require them to consistently move forward, to learn that sometimes you could just sit and be.

 

He needed to learn to let go, to move forward, to move on. She didn’t know if she was teaching him that, or if she’d taught him anything at all, but she liked to think that he was learning how to be happy.

 

“You remind me of her,” He confessed to her at one point, as they’d been sitting out by the lake, him explaining how he’d yet to find a solution to his golden egg, “Ellie, I mean.”

 

She hadn’t commented on that and he hadn’t explained but for whatever reason being reminded of his sister was enough to eventually prompt him into asking her to a dance.

 

“Hermione’s already been asked, and I don’t really know anyone else and… We can just go as friends, if you want…” He’d been fumbling and awkward in his delivery, his face flushing, but when she’d said yes his smile had been dazzling.

 

He looked so young, much younger than Tom somehow, he looked too young to be put through these kinds of hardships.

 

And so she wrote Tom that she’d be needing a dress, she hadn’t realized he’d take it so seriously.

 

* * *

 

 

_Ellie,_

_Meet me in Hogsmede._

* * *

 

 

 

It’d been a few months since she’d seen Tom, since late August, and it was like seeing him for the first time. Even in a room filled with people, with noise, with laughter, he shone like a star so that eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to him. He had a sort of stillness that wasn’t seen in most people an overwhelming confidence that wasn’t to be questioned, and when he stared into your eyes it was like he was looking through to your very soul.

 

On entering The Three Broomsticks, Hogsmede’s loudest and most popular pub, she immediately took note of him sitting in the middle of the room surrounded by subtle wards meant to deflect attention.

 

“Ellie,” He greeted when she sat down across from him, he gave her what he probably felt was a pleasant smile, but she knew Tom too well to be fooled by it. Tom was not pleased, “Would you like something to drink?”  


“Butterbeer wouldn’t be bad.”

 

Tom casually raised his hand and ordered two of the drinks, giving a charming grin to the waitress who couldn’t help but blush at his actions, and Ellie couldn’t help but note that his mask was more complete when it came to other people. He didn’t show all his faces to them, only to Ellie, and she wasn’t sure why she felt pleased by that.

 

They both waited until the frothing drinks were placed on the table, staring across at one another and waiting for the other to speak first, it wasn’t until the waitress had left and they were alone again that any real conversation started.

 

“I don’t remember ever telling you to take the boy who lived on a date, Ellie.” Tom commented with piercing eyes and a sly sort of smile, the syllable of date standing out harshly, as if date far too soft of a word for the action.

 

“You said to watch and to report; it’s easier to watch if I’m fairly close.” Ellie said before shrugging and leaning back in her chair, “Besides, he asked very nicely, I wasn’t about to say no.”

 

Tom’s eyebrows raised at her casualness, “I wonder what he would say if he could see you discarding his feelings so flippantly; surely he would be put out.”

 

“Maybe,” She said unwilling to elaborate, instead sipping from her drink, when Tom didn’t respond when he continued to stare with those too sharp eyes of him she changed topics, “So, you know how Hogwarts has been, but what on earth have you been up to?”

 

Judging by the tightening of his lips, the narrowing of his eyes, he wasn’t exactly pleased with the new direction the conversation was taking. However he seemed willing to play along, “He’s alive and more, I’ve met him.”

 

Ellie blinked, setting down her drink, and wasn’t it strange that without Tom even saying a word she knew exactly what he was talking about? She cleared her throat and asked, “You mean the other you, the dark lord you?”

 

She failed to mention that he was her supposed father, according to Tom, and she guessed it said a lot about how they both regarded that little conversation as complete fiction. She also had the feeling that Tom wasn’t exactly pleased with the situation; and he would not be trying to tie bonds between Ellie and this unknown man anytime soon.  

 

“That’s right, he’s an… interesting man.” Tom frowned, thinking, replaying their meeting in his head most likely, “And for now we have agreed that it’s in our best interests to work together.”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ellie asked.

 

“It means that he will remain Voldemort and you and I will remain unobtrusive, for now.” Something about those last two words, tacked on to the end, the way his eyes darkened on the syllable made Ellie think this was more complicated than Tom was playing it off.

 

If they were playing the game of sides then there were far more than one judging from what Tom had said thus far.

 

“You mentioned me then?” Ellie asked, that seemed a little unlike Tom who liked many aces up his sleeve but she supposed it was possible if they were both trading secrets.

 

“He already knew.” Tom said shortly leaving details up to Ellie’s imagination. She wondered what that meant, if she had met this other Tom before, back when her memories were still intact.

 

“Does he want to meet with me or something?” Ellie asked and Tom stared at her blankly for a moment, something hiding in his expression, and after a too long pause he shook his head.

 

“No, not now, not yet.”

 

Ellie nodded at that, Tom didn’t look like he was in the mood to be pushed, and she knew that the last place they needed to cause a scene was Hogsmede. Instead her thoughts turned to what Tom had told her, that they were joining the dark lord’s bandwagon, something clicked in her head.

 

“He’s after Harry Potter, isn’t he? That’s what this whole tournament is really about.” Ellie said, and Tom gave her a look as if she was the largest idiot in the world.

 

“Obviously.”

 

But it wasn’t obvious, oh sure some believed Harry and suspected foul play, but many felt that it was just a byproduct of Harry’s insanity, a cry for help, or something to stroke his own over inflated ego. And even among those who thought that someone had forced Harry in there were few who would go so far as to say it was the dead dark lord that Harry had killed off.

 

“Why stick him in a tournament, there are much easier and faster ways to kill someone, more accurate too.” She pointed out which only earned her a further frustrated glare from Tom as if she had gone from idiocy to mentally handicapped in a manner of seconds.

 

“I said to keep him alive, didn’t I? The point is not to get him killed.”

 

“Then what’s the point?” Ellie asked and for a moment he seemed to debate whether he should tell her or not but he was too determined to falter.

 

“None of our business.”

 

He seemed resolute, his face perfectly still, his eyes boring into hers demanding no questions be asked. And so it was taking another sip of her butterbeer that she added on Tom's own words to that sentence, “For now.”

 

“For now.” Tom agreed more quietly before glancing around the pub with a look that was almost nostalgic, “This place is much more lively than when I was a student, it’d only just opened in my later years.”

 

“Well, it is where all the cool kids hang out.” Ellie said jerking her head toward the groups of students flocked around tables, some of them who would have waved and asked her to sit if they had noticed her coming in.

 

“Yes, sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday that I was a student as well.” He fingered the table absently, his hand drawing small circles, and in that moment it wasn’t too difficult to imagine him in a Hogwarts’ uniform with a Slytherin tie hanging from his neck.

 

“Ellie I…” He started before cutting himself off, for a moment he silently looked over his own drink before starting again, “Ellie, if I had asked you to the dance, would you have gone with me?”

 

For a moment she wasn’t sure she understood the question, or rather she didn’t know why Tom was asking it, he wasn’t at Hogwarts so he couldn’t have asked her to the dance anyway. The way he was looking at her though made it seem as if this question was important, more important than talking about dark lords or Harry Potter, as if something had been drained from him simply by asking.

 

Looking at him she gave him the answer he needed and wanted to hear, “Yes, I think I would have.”

 

He smiled then, something that was too relieved to belong truly to him, and said, “You’ve grown taller, again. You know, even with the brown hair and eyes, every time I look at you I still see you as you were. With red hair, and eyes that are too green… This summer, when you come home, we’ll have to make sure that we give you your color back.”

 

He took her hands then, only for a moment, smiled over them and held them in his. Then before she could really think on the action or respond to it he stood, “I’m afraid I have to leave, there is business that needs attending to.”

 

And then he was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

Tom sent her a dress only a few days before the ball. It was a beautiful thing, the kind of dress that an enchanted princess might wear, and she’d stared at it for a good minute just dazzled by it. Like most things with Tom she didn’t know what to think or feel at the sight of it, only knowing that maybe it made her happy.

 

She wondered how long it had taken him to find it and how long he had spent holding it in his hands and picturing her standing in it.

 

When Harry Potter spotted her in it, on the top of the stairs, he had smiled and told her that she looked beautiful.

 

* * *

 

 

She’d mentioned it more than once to Tom in letters but she’d never openly addressed the fact that Madeye Moody was completely insane. Whatever had happened to him during the war and after had driven him far past his breaking point.

 

Sure, it had only been spiders that he’d offed and tortured during his class, but all the same not everyone had it in them to so casually use the three darkest common curses known in magical Britain. She’d heard he’d done this in all his upper level classes, from fourth year onwards, and even in her NEWT class her classmates had been horrified.

 

He’d later had a lesson where he cast the imperious curse on each of them telling them that it was necessary to know what it felt like to fight if off later. Perhaps this was true, she wouldn’t know, she apparently naturally had a strong enough will to resist it but at any rate she’d never heard of a man thinking it was a good idea to cast it on children.

 

What really pushed her over the edge though was the tournament’s second trial, where Harry had succeeded in saving Ron Weasley through the use of Gillyweed, was that what Harry had confessed afterwards.

 

“I thought it’d be you down there, at first… Ron and I barely talk anymore.” Harry’s expression had turned bitter at this, “I almost went for Hermione, but then realized Viktor was after her… If Ellie had been alive it would have been her.”

 

“Gillyweed was smart.” Ellie commented and he’d given her a look.

 

“I didn’t actually think of it, Moody suggested it. He’s been really helpful, actually, he was the one who said I should use the summoning charm to get my broom.” And as Harry had smiled at the thought of Moody’s helpfulness Ellie couldn’t help but frown.

 

And she couldn’t help but wonder where Voldemort’s inside man was, if she was Tom’s, and if ‘keep him alive’ had been in his orders as well.

 

So towards the end of the year, as the third task approached, Ellie added a new name to her list and wrote to Tom.

 

* * *

 

 

_Ellie,_

_Drop Moody, he’s none of your business._

* * *

 

 

On the eve of his third task Harry Potter was strangely pensive, staring out at the sunset from the corridor with a sad smile on his face, “It’s almost May.”

 

He’d said this without turning towards her, somehow knowing she was lingering behind him, and she joined him at the railing, looking out towards the lake and the red eye that was the sun.

 

“I don’t know if you know this but May is when everything falls apart at Hogwarts. Ellie died in May.” He gave her a brief smile before looking out again into the distance.

 

“You’re worried about the last task?” She asked and he nodded.

 

“Yeah, you know, my parents came when they first heard I was entered. Demanded I be pulled out, but magical contracts don’t really listen to parents. They’ve come to every task, and every time I look at the audience I can just see them, looking so worried.” He paused an uncertain look crossing his features, “I hope they don’t have to worry this time.”

 

She said nothing for a moment, observed him, his boyish features and his too large glasses. Again she was struck by how young and how fallible he looked. He was caught in a great spider’s web and he did not even realize it, “If they do have to worry will you be ready?”

 

“What do…” He began only for her to cut him off, her eyes sharper than she meant them to be, and her face expressionless.

 

“Will you play the role you have been assigned, boy who lived, if it’s called for?”

 

He didn’t answer, his mouth opened, looked as if he was about to exclaim that he had no idea what she was saying but he didn’t protest when she placed her hands on his shoulders and said, “There is only one role you can play when your name is Harry Potter and you are doomed to play it until the end. If you must play it, if the stage demands your presence, then play it well.”

 

* * *

 

 

She watched as Harry Potter did not appear at the stage, and somewhere in that audience, she imagined the horror of James and Lily Potter as they realized that their second child had disappeared in much the same manner as the first.

 

They waited for hours there in that audience, eventually the tournament was called off and Fleur Delacour and Viktor Krum were found in the maze, Fleur having been tortured and Viktor having been under the imperius curse. Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory were nowhere to be found and the goblet itself was missing.

 

She imagined that Moody was probably booking it out of the school, since as the Defense Professor someone was sure to suspect him, or who knew maybe he’d keep his cover and stay. Tom had mentioned that Moody had been close to Dumbledore; so maybe he’d take his inside man act just one step further.

 

Ellie wasn’t surprised to find Tom waiting for her, as everyone panicked and rushed back to the school, he stood leaning against the quidditch stands where they were supposed to have honored the victors. He was perfectly still, as always, an anchor amidst the chaos of human activity; perfectly unconcerned.

 

“Ellie.” He said when he caught sight of her, an appraising glint in his eyes.

 

“Tom.” She responded shoving her hands into her pockets and then said, “I take it we’re all done here, then?”

 

He didn’t answer but instead held out his hand, she took it, and together they walked in silence to the edge of the Forbidden Forest where they apparated into the next act of the play.


	4. Chapter 4

Her first time meeting the dark lord was interesting for several reasons.

 

One because it was in what she had come to think of as her own home; Voldemort had taken over the house on the hill and made it his own. When Tom and she had lived there it had merely been dilapidated now every corner reeked of dark magic and blood. It seemed unfamiliar now, with him at its head, and she had the sneaking suspicion that it would not be so easy to get him out now that they had invited him in.

 

The other reason that it was interesting was because he was Tom and not Tom in the same moment. He looked like an older version of Tom, in his thirties rather than his teens, but there were small differences between them. He had Tom’s face, his eyes, but he didn’t wear his expressions.

 

He didn’t feel that it was necessary to harbor Tom’s secrets.

 

“Well, if it isn’t little Eleanor Potter, my favorite student.” He said when she and Tom entered through the wards. Tom had stiffened then, his hand clenching hers a little too tightly. Glancing over at him she could see that this statement had terrified him; as if by those words alone the universe might come crashing down on all their heads.

 

Eleanor Potter, Tom probably thought she hadn’t guessed.

 

“It’s just Ellie now, I have a bit of a memory problem, you understand.” She said her eyes narrowing across at the man, and he seemed oddly pleased by this as if he expected nothing less from her.

 

“Yes, Tom was kind enough to explain your current predicament. Would you two like to come in, the house elf is preparing tea.”

 

She and Tom walked in and sat together on the couch, facing the dark lord, watching the firelight dance across his features and make them seem almost inhuman. Tom said nothing, merely stared across at his counterpart with something resembling hatred in his eyes.

 

“You’ve grown up, amnesia suits you.” The dark lord commented and then his eyes drifted to Tom’s, “I can see why he’s so attached.”

 

Tom’s hand slammed down on the table, the wood shuddering momentarily, and in spite of their softness his words were filled with venom, “Don’t fuck with me.”

 

She turned to stare at him, at the rage burning inside his pale blue eyes, at the steadiness of his hand and the stoniness of his features. Tom didn’t talk like that, it was too casual, too blunt, too direct for him. She’d seen him angry, she’d even made him angry some of the time, but she’d never seen him this unhinged with fury. It just made the situation that much more uneasy, as if she had to tread very carefully.

 

“Tom…” She said and with it he relaxed slightly, removing his hand from the table, and leaning back on the couch to stare at his counterpart with eyes like daggers.

 

The other, older, Tom was watching this display with his own unreadable expression.

 

They all seemed willing to sit there in silence, each waiting for the other’s move, as if they were in some elaborate duel where there was far too much riding on the outcome. She caught herself staring at both of them, comparing and contrasting, wondering which one was more Tom-like than the other or if either were Tom-like at all.

 

They sat even when the elf arrived with tea and they sat afterwards none of them breaking eye contact with the other.

 

It was Lily, the third party, who finally spoke, “So, what now?”

 

“What now?” The older Tom, Voldemort, asked with raised eyebrows.

 

“Tom mentioned that you and he had something of an agreement, is it still intact now that you’ve gotten what you wanted?” Something about the way she said that made Voldemort chuckle, and what  a sight it was to see a dark lord chuckle, and the dark aura of anger around Tom to only grow stronger.

 

“Is that how he phrased it?” He asked looking at Tom with mock affection, “Oh Tom, it seems you haven’t lost that particular talent after all.”

 

Voldemort then leaned forward towards her as if to convey a great secret, “You see, I own him. He may talk about sides, about alliances, about agreements if he wishes but deep down he knows that it’s just not true.”

 

His eyes flicked towards Tom, almost indifferent to him, to his white knuckles and burning eyes, “Tom here isn’t really a person, he’s something similar to a memory, he wasn’t even supposed to be sentient. He wasn’t born, he was made, and the purpose for which he was made was very limited. He just likes to pretend that he’s more than…”

 

The table Voldemort had been leaning over, complete with the tea and dishes, suddenly hurled itself into the fire place.

 

“That’s enough!” Tom was standing then, breathing heavily, his teeth set on edge as he stared at the older version of himself.

 

“Calm down, boy.” Voldemort demanded looking at the younger version of himself with raised eyebrows, “You’ll break something important if you aren’t careful.”

 

Tom probably had a lot to say, it looked like he had a lot to say, but he didn’t instead his magic swirled darkly all around him like an oncoming thunderstorm. Ellie wondered if this older version of Tom knew what he was goading on, he had to, since it was him, but he seemed to be enjoying this moment far too much.

 

He was toying with Tom; like he was a kneazle with a bit of string.

 

“You may have taken yourself out of that diary easily enough but remember that I can just as easily stuff you back inside.” The dark lord then sighed, like this was all some terrible disappointment.

 

Tom’s eyes widened at this, his face paling slightly, but his anger only became more suffocating.

 

 “Do try to learn your place, Tom Riddle.” Voldemort said when it appeared that Tom was just going to stand there silently.

 

Then just when she’d gotten used to the sight of Tom just standing there he grabbed her hand and pulled her up so that she was standing then immediately began walking out of the room. Voldemort did not object to this, merely watched them go with a strange unreadable smile on his face as the table in the fire place continued to burn.

 

* * *

 

 

He took them to one of the guest rooms, a plain room in comparison to the master bedroom where he had originally slept, and when he stared ahead at it his eyes seemed too dull to belong to him.

 

“We’re staying here now.” He explained before walking in and collapsing into a chair.

 

“There’s only one bed.” She pointed out, and Tom nodded slowly, either ignoring the issue or refusing to see it. Ellie looked between Tom and the bed with a flush rising in her cheeks not quite sure how to phrase her objection or why her heart was beating so fast.

 

(Somewhere in the back of her head she remembered that she’d always thought Tom was uncommonly pretty.)

 

But he wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t even looking at her, was just staring ahead at nothing looking like he had died.

 

“So he’s a bit of a cryptic asshole.” Ellie said as she entered the room and took the seat across from Tom. “You also don’t seem to like him much.”

 

It said a lot, probably more than Tom wanted her to know, that he didn’t argue with her on that point or didn’t even glare at her. She hadn’t understood half of what that man had said but whatever he had said it hadn’t been good.

 

“He’s everything I expected him to be and yet…” Tom trailed off, leaving the end of that thought unspoken.

 

“So what was he talking about? About you?” She asked and the moment she did she regretted it, Tom’s magic crackled, stiffened.

 

“I am… I am a horcrux.” He said shortly before adding, “I anchor him to reality.”

 

She’d never heard of that before, Tom had never mentioned it in his lessons and she hadn’t seen anything on it Hogwarts, but whatever it was it sounded very magical and very complicated. It sounded like something Tom would be, not human, a horcrux.

 

“Is it bad, being a horcrux?” She asked and he smiled slightly shaking his head.

 

“No, it’s… Well perhaps in the opinion of the narrow minded. Most don’t understand the concept of being a horcrux, only creating a horcrux. Being a horcrux is… It is neither good nor bad.”

 

“So what’s the problem?” She asked when he didn’t elaborate and failed to look any happier.

 

“He’s not a horcrux and so he believes he has more of a right to my name, to my house, to this world than I do. And he might be right.”

 

She wasn’t sure what she could say to that, since she didn’t really know what a horcrux was in the first place, so she said the first thing that came to mind, his own words, “For now.”

 

He turned to look at her in confusion and she explained, “You told me that, in Hogsmede, for now. Not forever, maybe not even for very long, just for now.”

 

“For now…” He repeated dumbly looking somewhat stunned by the words, as if they were completely unfamiliar, which was ridiculous since he was the one who said them. His magic relaxed though and the room no longer seemed to be filled with shadows.

 

Ellie took it as her opportunity to change topics.

 

“Harry Potter’s somewhere in this house, isn’t he?” She asked.

 

Apparently it was the wrong topic because Tom immediately tensed and his magic returned to crackling around him like electricity. It seemed Harry Potter was a bit of a sore topic for him perhaps as much as being a horcrux.

 

“I wouldn’t go looking for him if I were you.”

 

“Why not?”

 

Here he only ominously responded, “You might not like what you find.”

 

And between them the image of a broken, bleeding, dead Harry Potter was all too easy to picture. Something inside her shifted at this thought, her heart stuttered, and she tried not to let it show on her face.

 

“You should have told me that he was my brother.”

 

The anger that had been in the meeting, that he’d lost sight of momentarily, returned in full force, “And what a wonderful brother he was, leaving you friendless and alone to fight the monsters while he played with his friends. Trust me, Ellie, you weren’t missing much.”

 

“Isn’t that for me to decide?”

 

For a moment, as she stared across at him, she thought he was going to hit her. She didn’t flinch when his hand reached for her and when he only softly cupped her face and moved his hands through her hair returning the locks to their former color.

 

“You were far too biased to make a reasonable decision. I don’t think there was anything in the world you loved more than your brother. But he didn’t love you and you suffered for it.”

 

That didn’t seem to be true though, Harry was always thinking of the dead Eleanor Potter, was always talking about her. She’d spent a whole year listening to him talk about almost nothing but Ellie Potter.

 

“He loves me.”

 

And Tom just shook his head.

 

“He likes to believe he does; but that’s not the same thing.”

 

* * *

 

 

Harry Potter seemed to be everywhere, hanging silently on the edge of every unspoken sentence, in every gesture in every shadow he haunted the house. So that even when she was lying on top of the bed she and Tom shared she could see him staring back at her from the ceiling. At least that was how she felt, in reality Harry Potter was locked somewhere in the basement, alive but only for the moment.

 

Voldemort was, in his own way, rapidly trying to dispose of him.

 

It was a lot of effort and caution to take with a fourteen year old boy, she’d told Tom that one night, but he’d just shrugged as if he wasn’t entirely sure he understood it either.

 

“He said there was a prophecy and that was why he originally confronted your family that night. However, when he first tried to avert the prophecy things went a little awry, as you’ve heard. So he’s trying to think outside the box with this.” 

 

He’d first sent Wormtail in to kill him, to slit the boy’s throat or else cast the killing curse at him, but somehow in spite of being chained like a muggle farm animal for the slaughterhouse Harry had managed to kill Wormtail instead.

 

He’d tried enchanting the room to destroy him but the wards had failed.

 

He’d tried poisoning his food but Harry refused to touch it at any rate.

 

And so now he was trying the long way, starving Harry Potter to death.

 

Sometimes, if you listened hard enough, you could hear him screaming down in the basement.

 

They were all walking on eggshells in that place, Tom seemed as if he was always only a few seconds from exploding and burning the house down, Harry Potter always a few seconds from dying, and the dark lord… Well, she didn’t know what to think of the dark lord.

 

He liked her, she got that much, but liking something didn’t seem to mean much to him. She had the feeling that he could still like her and stab a knife into her back if he felt it was necessary. He would always watch her when she entered a room, more even than he watched Tom, and whenever he did she always felt he knew more than he should have.

 

Eleanor Potter, whoever she had been, had let him get far too close for comfort.

 

Death Eaters came in and out, there were plans to break into Azkaban and round up the remaining troops, plans to take over the ministry and then eventually Hogwarts itself, plans and more plans besides.

 

There were rituals, meetings, meetings that seemed too much like dark rituals in themselves to really be called meetings, and there was Harry Potter screaming in the basement.

 

It wasn’t very long into this routine that she realized that she couldn’t allow Harry Potter to starve to death, no matter the consequences from the dark lord or even Tom. Harry Potter was going to live, he needed to live, because without him there wouldn’t be a play to begin with.

 

At least, that’s what she told herself when she descended into the basement with too panicked steps.

 

* * *

 

 

Her first action was to shove food into his cell, more than he could probably eat at the moment, but what he needed to live.

 

In her hand she cast a small light so she could see him better, curled into a corner, already too thin and ill looking. They’d gotten rid of his glasses, and so when he blinked over towards her he looked almost blind.

 

“You’re going to die if you don’t eat something.” He flinched at the sound of her voice, backing away from her slightly.

 

She repeated herself and a more aware look entered his eyes but soon enough it was replaced by anger, “Like I’m not going to die if I eat it either.”

 

“It’s not poisoned.” Ellie tore off a piece of bread and began to eat so that he could see for himself.

 

He didn’t seem persuaded so she started talking again, “If you eat it you might die, that’s true, but if you don’t eat anything then you are going to die guaranteed. With stakes like that you might as well gamble.”

 

Again he seemed unconvinced but his eyes did narrow in her general direction and he asked, “Who are you? Bellatrix Lestrange?”

 

He probably picked the first female Death Eater to come to mind; he was lucky she wasn’t Bellatrix Lestrange from what she’d heard that woman was quite the deranged piece of work.

 

“She’s still in Azkaban having her soul sucked out by dementors.” He seemed put off by that explanation, not quite sure what to think of it.

 

Finally he asked, “What do you want from me?”

 

That was a good question, but the fact that he’d even asked it made her feel uncomfortable, despairing even. She didn’t want anything from him. It wasn’t an act of economics, by all rights if it was about costs and benefits she should have let him starve to death. A Harry who starved to death wouldn’t bring a dark lord or Tom down on her head. It wasn’t about what it could get her, it was about needing him to live.

 

And he just didn’t get it.

 

“I don’t want anything from you.” She said slowly, the words feeling bitterer than they should.

 

He scoffed at that, “Nobody does anything for free, you want something, what is it?”

 

“Nothing.” She said and he looked away from her, almost sneering, like this place had no room for compassion or acts of kindness.

 

“I’m not going to tell you anything, if that’s what this is about. I don’t know anything anyway, being the boy who lived doesn’t mean I actually get told things.” This was probably true, although he and Dumbledore had staring contests on an almost daily basis Ellie had never seen them exchanging words. Prophesized savior Harry Potter might be but he was still a fourteen year old boy, it would have been a long time before they gave him any real information.

 

“That’s not what this is about.”

 

“Then what is it about?”

 

She didn’t bother to respond, she just looked at him, this defiant dying boy and made her way out of the dungeons leaving him with piles of food and wards to distract whoever might come snooping down to see how their resident boy savior was doing.

 

Why was talking with Harry Potter always so difficult?

 

* * *

 

 

That summer was more of a game than it was a life.

 

It was a game called “Who Will Call the Bluff First” because everyone knew that everyone else knew that Ellie had decided to keep Harry Potter alive. She’d tried for subtlety, slightly, but it was their house and their souls seemed to be ingrained in it sometimes.

 

It also was clear when Harry Potter started to be a little less thin in spite of not eating in weeks and was even managing to stand up and spit in his enemies’ faces. She wondered if Harry Potter really had almost been sorted into Slytherin, because he certainly wasn’t doing a good job of hiding his recovery from certain death.

 

She started spending a fair amount of time with him, whenever she brought him food, and he always seemed to have something to say to her. Sometimes it was accusatory, untrusting, but gradually as time went on and he kept not being poisoned he started opening up more.

 

“Why do you work for him, for Voldemort, you know what he is don’t you?” He asked at one point, she didn’t think he could see her face, he’d never mentioned her looking an awful lot like his sister or his mother and he always sort of squinted in her general direction as if trying to get a clearer view.

 

“I don’t work for him.” She’d said and he’d seemed confused by that, like somehow living in the same house meant she had to work for Voldemort. She didn’t work for Voldemort though, Tom didn’t either, they just sort of existed as satellites orbiting around him.

 

She supposed it was a bit of a complicated relationship to explain to an impatient and starving Harry Potter.

 

“If you don’t work for him why are you here?”

 

“You know, I really don’t know.” She’d been in this house as long as she could remember after all.

 

“What do you mean, you don’t really know?” He asked, Harry could be obnoxiously persistent sometimes. She could let it slide, just shrug it off, but staring across at him she decided to illustrate it with an example near and dear to his heart.

 

“Tell me, Harry, why are you the boy who lived?” She asked and he blinked at that, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

 

“What does that have to do with anything?” He responded, his eyes attempting to focus on her but as usual probably coming up with to a pale blur.

 

“Try to answer the question, why are you the boy who lived? Why not Neville Longbottom, Ron Weasley, or hell even Eleanor Potter?” She asked.

 

She thought for a moment that he might not answer, that Eleanor Potter as an example might be too much, but then he said coldly, “Because Voldemort shot me in the head.”

 

“Voldemort shot lots of people in the head, what made you so special?” She responded before he could be satisfied with his own answer.

 

“Dumbledore said it was my mum’s love…” He started but she cut him off.

 

“Many children are loved by their mothers, most of them don’t live when they’re hit with the green light. If that was the case it’d be pretty evident. Besides, that’s what Dumbledore said, and he wasn’t even there at the time so what does he know? Try again.” She said leaving him no room to move.

 

“Well maybe he messed up somehow, maybe he…”

 

“He had a lot of practice before getting to you, I don’t think he’d mess up point blank killing an infant.”

 

“Then I don’t know!” He shouted, the anger finally stopping his train of pseudo logic.

 

Her eyebrows raised at him and in a tone that was probably a little too satisfied she said, “What do you mean, you don’t really know?”

 

He sulked slightly, his anger leaving but his frustration remaining, and he said, “That’s completely different from you living in Voldemort’s bloody house.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

For a moment they sat in silence, her listening to him eat, and him staring at her. Finally he said, “We have to get out of here. He’s destroying England; maybe the whole world if we don’t stop him here.”

 

Ellie highly doubted that, well she didn’t really know Voldemort but she knew Tom. Tom may have had his emotional problems and wasn’t necessarily a people person but he liked the world; or rather he liked having a world to live in. If Voldemort went off the deep end and tried to raze the country to the ground then Tom would stop him.

 

“He’s a monster.” Harry insisted when she didn’t respond and in his eyes, so similar to her own, she could almost see the corpses of murdered children.

 

“Harry, it’s not that easy to just get you out.” And it wouldn’t be, because right now they were in limbo, they were all still alive and waiting for everyone else’s move. In an odd way Harry was safe here in the basement where she could look after him, he wasn’t untouchable, but there was no immediate reason to kill him either. If he left, if he went outside, then there was no telling what might happen.

 

He’d seemed frustrated by that answer, by the way she’d said it, because he finally said, “You have to get me out of here. We both have to get out of here, before he finds out what you’re doing.”

 

And every time she saw him after that he never failed to try to persuade her to escape with him and she never failed to not tell him that Voldemort was already perfectly aware of the situation. He just didn’t really want to do anything about it, after all, if Harry Potter was locked in a basement it wasn’t as if he could be doing anything important.

 

At least, that’s what she thought, until Voldemort decided to take it into his own hands once again.

 

* * *

 

 

With August panic began to spread concerning Harry Potter’s disappearance, his face was pasted one every wall and his face on the cover of every Prophet. The walls of Azkaban came tumbling down, Voldemort’s name was once more whispered in the streets, and it seemed the British Wizarding World was doomed.

 

It was just the sort of end that Harry Potter raved about every time he tried to convince her to escape with him.

 

The house on the hill though seemed indifferent to the prospect, it remained as it always had, on the verge of collapsing with dark magic oozing from every unchecked corner. And every night she and Voldemort had their little chats over tea, which he seemed to enjoy far too much for anyone’s good.

 

“Of course the ministry has never been the true point of resistance.” Voldemort began, it was the usual sort of opening for him. Voldemort wasn’t a fan of small talk or pointless pleasantries, he knew her health and the weather so he didn’t bother to ask about it, instead he would always start the conversation he wished to have and leave it to her to play along.

 

Tom was absent as usual, he was never invited to these night time teas, and she thought that half of the reason Voldemort invited her was so that he could rub it in Tom’s face. The first time he had summoned her, and not Tom, she’d thought the furniture might catch on fire from Tom’s palpable rage. If there was anything that Tom hated more than the house, more than his older self, it was the idea of Voldemort having a heart to heart with Ellie.

 

“The Order of the Phoenix, Albus Dumbledore, that is where the true power has always been.” Voldemort mused and looked over at her and gauged her reaction.

 

Voldemort liked to play mind games, even more than Tom, he liked to push and prod and find out exactly how she ticked. Like there was a muggle machine named Ellie and he had ripped open its circuits and was fiddling here and there as he pleased regardless of warning lights and whistles.

 

“You’re going to do something about them then?” She asked and he smiled, a winning grin that just seemed too wrong on his face.

 

“Oh, I already have.”

 

The answer was fairly obvious in hindsight, “You stole Harry Potter right from under Dumbledore’s nose.”

 

“Very good, Eleanor Potter.” He complimented and she wondered if she had been this uneasy when she’d actually had her memories. Guessing what Eleanor Potter would do usually got her nowhere, so she tried to avoid it, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself.

 

“Thanks.” She said, flatly, leaving him to take it for what it was.

 

There was always a point to Voldemort’s conversations, sometimes it was subtle, sometimes it was alarmingly obvious, but there was always a point to the games he liked to play. She just hadn’t realized that sometimes he played multiple games at once.

 

It was Voldemort, on that day in August, months after Harry had been kidnapped and Azkaban had been broken into that he decided to call her bluff. He leaned forward, his eyes suddenly sharp, and in a cold voice said, “I know you’ve been keeping him alive.”

 

“What?”

 

“I know you’ve been keeping him alive, bringing him food and water, and I know that he’s been trying to convince you to let him escape; thinking he’s found my weak link.”

 

He eyed her speculatively, her heart racing, and all in one moment she felt as if she was some magical creature pinned down for a demonstration in class. She tried to think of some excuse, of something to say, of anything but her mind was too blank.

 

“You’re forcing my hand, Eleanor.” He said when she didn’t respond, “If you refuse to let me starve him then I will have to be more brutal, because you see he must die.”

 

“It didn’t work the last time you tried to kill him.” She suddenly blurted and she didn’t know what she was expecting with that but it wasn’t the sardonic look she received.

 

“No, Eleanor, it didn’t work the last time I tried to kill you. As far as I know he’s perfectly mortal.”

 

“What are you talking about?” She asked, because she suddenly had a cold sinking feeling in her stomach that this conversation had nothing to do with Harry Potter.

 

“I think I should tell you a story, Eleanor Potter. About the boy who lived and how he never existed in the first place…”

 

* * *

 

 

“I doubt Tom Riddle has told you this as it doesn’t paint him in a particularly favorable light but he’s tried to kill you about a thousand times by now. He started with a basilisk, but when you woke up and started to get to your feet he moved to the killing curse. The young, fabricated, Tom Marvolo Riddle then went on to try every curse, every method, everything he could possibly think of but you refused to die.

 

Each time he slit your throat he would watch as you slowly sat back up and tried to remove the blood from your clothing. He ruined your Hogwarts uniform beyond even the repair of magic.

 

Eventually, realizing he had just confronted an immovable obstacle, he changed tactics. If I can’t kill her, he said to himself, then I’ll just change her into something I can use instead. He adapted and so the next spell he pointed at your twelve year old head didn’t kill you, at least, from some points of view.

 

Tell me, Eleanor Potter, is losing every memory of what you were and where you’ve been akin to dying?

 

October 31, 1981 I did not kill or attempt to kill your brother. I passed over your parents, stunned them and cast them aside, and I made first to kill the child who wasn’t involved in the prophecy; the girl.

 

There is no boy who lived, he is a creation of Dumbledore’s, of a misinterpreted prophecy. There is only Harry James Potter; who has been brought up to believe that one day he might defeat me when he never will manage it.

 

If Tom Riddle could destroy everything you were in a single instant don’t think that I can’t.

 

Tell me, Eleanor Potter, would you be willing to risk your life, your sanity, your very being to spare him a couple days of his wretched existence?”

* * *

 

 

_It wasn’t a well-known fact, or one even discussed extensively as far as she could tell, but sometimes people were born just a little off._

 

* * *

 

 

Betrayal wasn’t like a knife in the back, because the knife in the back was the one you didn’t see, no betrayal was when they cut you through the heart. When they did it right in front of you and when you looked in their eyes and asked why they didn’t even bother to respond.

 

_“And you, Tom?”_

 

She had a feeling that Tom knew the moment she was told, when everything was put together, because when she opened the door to the bedroom he looked like he had been waiting for her.

 

Maybe he had, maybe he’d been waiting for her a very long time, maybe he’d been waiting since that moment with the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets.

 

Either way he was waiting now, staring at the window from the chair in the corner, not even flinching at the sound of her entrance.

 

He looked positively untouchable.

 

“You son of a bitch.” The words felt dead before they even left her lips, colder than she had ever felt before, and even looking at him was causing something in her to burn far too coldly.

 

He turned to look at her slowly, his face expressionless, saying nothing.

 

“How did it feel, each time you did it?” She asked as she stepped in, and then, when she was only a foot or so away from she asked, “Was it any fun?”

 

There were lows and then there were lows, there was killing, and then there was what Tom had done. A slaughter, over and over and over again, until finally he did the next best thing he could think of. She couldn’t remember it but she could feel it, she could picture it so well, because he would do that wouldn’t he? He would do whatever he felt was necessary, wouldn’t he?

 

Her magic must have been rattling the windows, seeping into every crevice, but she couldn’t seem to feel it.

 

“A question, Tom, if you don’t mind,” She leaned over so that her face was inches from his, “Why the show if you only wanted me out of the way; why the charade of Ellie and Tom?”

 

For a moment they only breathed, there was nothing he could say, nothing he would say. He could only look; something desperate and sharp in his eyes.

 

“Why, Tom?” She asked slamming her arms on the arm rest, screaming at him, but he didn’t move or say a word.

 

She could kill him, she thought as she looked at him, she could kill him now. He probably expected her to try, if it had been him in her place then he would have tried, and her fingers twitched as she pictured doing it. Killing Tom, the first thing she’d ever seen.

 

But she’d also made a promise, a year ago she’d made him a promise, and she’d meant it.

 

She promised she wouldn’t leave.

 

Slowly she stood back up, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, shoving the emotions down deep where they couldn’t run rampant.  She would make time for them later, when there was time, for now she would bask in apathy and do what needed to be done.

 

“This is the end, Tom.” She said, her words final and non-negotiable.

 

“I’m breaking him out tonight, Tom, and then I’m going to kill Voldemort and burn this house to the ground. If you want to find me I will be waiting for you at the end.” She walked away slowly, not turning back to look at him, but just kept marching out the door.

 

* * *

 

 

She didn’t say a word to Harry, didn’t offer him any explanation, instead she opened his cell and then started sprinting through the house pulling him along as she went. Even as he protested, as he blindly reached for her, she didn’t say a word.

 

Her life no longer revolved around Harry Potter, he was no longer her responsibility, and maybe Harry loved her and maybe he didn’t but he’d have to decide that for himself. Sometimes you couldn’t go back, you had to recognize when it was time to bow out; sometimes you had to let go and move forward.

 

She only spared him a parting wordless glance, as she’d dropped him off at the gates of Hogwarts, and she hoped that it had been enough.

 

As soon as she returned from dropping Harry off she set to lighting the place on fire. It was out of order, she’d planned to kill Voldemort first, but it was close enough and it would certainly get his attention.

 

Voldemort scrambled out of the house, looking majestic and terrifying but also a little wary, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he’d just started. He whipped out his wand when he caught sight of her, too fast for sanity’s sake.

 

“Tom’s right, I do love my brother.” She started as she watched the flames growing wildly out of control, “He may not love me, he thinks he does, but I do love him. If you hadn’t touched Harry, if you hadn’t started dragging out is death like a bloody quidditch match, than maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I doubt it though, I think it was always coming to this, will always come to this.”

 

“You know Eleanor, I don’t even think you realize the irony, but the last two times you killed me you also lit me on fire. Tell me, I came back the last two times you did it, do you think I can’t come back a third?” He asked, she gave him no response, because his coming back was irrelevant that wasn’t why they were here or why they were doing what they were doing.  

 

So she went on, turning fully to face him, the heat of the flames already past the point of salvaging the house.

 

“I’m going to kill you, get rid of your body, and then even I don’t know; but I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.”

 

“Do you think it will be that easy?” He asked.

 

No, but then, it wasn’t about being easy either. As he’d told her, he’d forced her hand.

 

* * *

 

 

It was to the stunned miraculous amazement of the wizarding world that Harry Potter was found before the start of the Hogwarts term. He was thinner, paler than he had been, his glasses were gone, and his Hogwarts uniform was almost soiled beyond repair but he was alive.

 

A few days after he had returned home, after being taken to Saint Mungos, and after he’d had ample time with his family Albus Dumbledore had come for a visit and he and Harry had discussed what had happened at the Riddle Manor.

 

“We believe it was the girl, the transfer student, Helen Müller who placed your name into the goblet and set you up to be taken to the graveyard.” Dumbledore explained, bringing out a picture of the girl, taken sometime at the beginning of the year and pausing over it.

 

Harry’s fingers brushed it gently, a thin smile that felt more like a grimace appearing on his face, and he asked, “Is she gone then?”

 

“She disappeared the same day you did, my dear boy. In retrospect perhaps I should have denied her admittance. Her paperwork had been in order, her OWL scores official, her story had seemed plausible, and more I felt that in Hogwarts she could be watched more carefully than if she was outside it. I’m afraid I was terribly mistaken.” Albus Dumbledore looked as if he had aged in the months of Harry Potter’s absence, his eyes losing some of their familiar twinkle as he looked at the photograph.

 

The girl had been too young to be working for a dark lord.  

 

“Someone got me out, you know, a girl, I think. I never saw her face, they broke my glasses pretty early but sometimes… Sometimes I thought it was Ellie, that I was going mad and that Ellie was somehow keeping me alive.” Harry gave a small laugh at this, shaking his head bitterly as if to dismiss this, “But maybe, she told me she didn’t work for the dark lord, that she just happened to live there.”

 

He interrupted before Dumbledore could, “I know, it sounds crazy, but maybe… I don’t think Helen put my name in the cup, or if she did then she didn’t really want me to win, she never told me how to get past the obstacles or anything. Moody was more help than she was with that, the only thing she told me was that Hagrid had dragons, not how to beat it.”

 

Harry picked up the photograph, taking in the sight of the dazed looking girl, “I think she’s always been on my side… I think, if Ellie didn’t get me out of that house, then I think Helen did and I just couldn’t recognize her face.”

* * *

 

 

“Well, I suppose you weren’t lying.”

 

“I don’t lie, generally.”

 

The house had long since burned down, only charred wood remaining, somewhere in that mess was Voldemort’s body but at this point it was impossible to pin down exactly where. Now it was just her and Tom, sitting on one of the cooling beams, staring at the blackened ruins.

 

“I will never be Voldemort now, will I?” He asked, a slow sad smile spreading across his lips.

 

“Probably not.”

 

He looked down at her then, not bothering to say that he’d never had a chance at Voldemort, and that maybe Voldemort had never really been worth much in the first place. There seemed nothing left to say to one another and she wondered how many times they would run into these moments; where words were insufficient.

 

“I think I know what it means to be a horcrux.” She said finally, he looked over at her, confusion etched into his features.

 

“I’m Harry’s horcrux, aren’t I? His anchor to reality, I’m what lets him be the boy who lived, something similar to a memory of him. A shadow of him…” She trailed off, unsure how to finish or if he even understood what she meant by the words, that she and Tom were the same after all.

 

After all of this, after all the lies, all the charades, all the genuine moments they had stolen from each other, after all that they were the same at the end of the day. Somehow, once the smoke died down, she felt that she could find it in herself to forgive him.

 

For a moment he seemed uncertain and it was slowly that he said, “Ellie, I wanted to tell you that… I do care, I am not without sentiment.”  

“I know.”

 

They looked up to the stars then, too bright without the house’s lights to dull them, and he was the first to ask, “What happens now?”

 

“Harry and Voldemort face each other again, when he manages to get another body, and we go do something else.”

 

He smiled at her vision of the future, the kind of sentence he would hate to receive in a letter, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t secretly loved those letters. He’d never told her, had never showed them to her, but she had a feeling that he’d kept every one of them.

 

Then the smile dripped from his lips replaced by dazed regret, “He won’t be able to kill Voldemort, as long as I am alive.”

 

Hidden in that sentence, as he stared at her, was the thought that Ellie would have to kill him if she wanted her brother to live.

 

“Then he’ll have to figure something else out.” She said and it was remarkable, she thought, how beautiful he managed to look with only relief, gratitude, and perhaps love in his eyes.

 

They would be fine, they would move forward, she had the feeling someone important had once said something like that to her.

 

That there was always a train to somewhere.

 

Still looking at the sky her eyes focused on the waxing moon she commented, “I hear the muggles have been to the moon, you know, wouldn’t that be something?”

 

It was a slow and soft smile that spread across his lips as he stared up with her.

 

“Yes, I suppose it would.”

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by multiple people actually. The first chapter was a story about Lily envying something in humanity which required too much rapid character development to get done in a one-shot so we got this. The next three were done when someone asked for a sequel.
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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